Hmm.  An angle I had never thought of before.  I agree with the general line of thought.  I’m not certain assault is the right classification though, simply due to sexual assault being a rather standard legally actionable category.  In the broader sense of the word’s meanings it works, but that makes it a bit confusing.  I’d go with harassment.

I don’t know Amanda. Do you think Mike Jones was a scumbag for exposing Ted Haggard? What’s the difference between a detailed verbal description and a video?

What I find most disgusting about the kind of Internet communities that seek out and distribute private videos and photos of women is the all-pervasive attitude of slut-shaming. I know slut-shaming is an integral part of a lot of porn (which is why I avoid most porn, though I have no moral objection to porn as a concept), but it becomes very blatant and vile in the case of amateur material. Lots and lots of people are happy to get off watching amateur pictures and videos, and then immediately turn around and call women whores for producing said pictures and videos.

Of course, they do the same thing with real sex. One of my male coworkers once had sex with a female coworker, and from then on, whenever she came up in conversation (just between the two of us, not that that excuses it) he’d call her a whore… for having sex with him.

Giving someone naughty pictures is a form of having sex with them. So bringing in a third party against their will is a form of assault. Talking about sex is talking about what you’ve done. It can edge into creepy, so there is not clear, bright line.  For instance, I’d probably say there’s a big difference between saying that you slept with someone and forwarding a sexual conversation you had online.

Also, I’m a blogger, not a lawyer. It should be understood that I’m not writing the law, but talking about cultural understanding of right and wrong.

In a more general sense, I’ve been really disturbed by the trend of school officials punishing students in school for things the students did out of school and that said officials learned about through social networking. I understand why what happens on school grounds and at school activities is their business, and they can and probably should set standards that are stricter than the law in general. But when on earth did they become the policemen of the world? Why, as a society, are we accepting this?

On the particulars, yes, it’s disgusting. The only discussion that should be had with the girls is to make them aware that someone accessed the photos so they can either remove the photos, tighten their privacy settings and/or reconsider who they’re allowing behind the privacy settings. Oh, and to ask if they want to press charges. End of story.

I feel the need to defend the man who exposed Prejean. You called him “the scum of the earth”, to me he’s a hero. I don’t think you could even call him her boyfriend. According to his interview on TMZ, they had an online relationship and had hooked up only once. She made several explicit tapes of herself and sent them to him via cell phone. Was he under any obligation to keep this private? No.

Thank you.  I’ve always felt that there’s something really, really wrong about the unauthorized publishing of sexual photos/videos, but I’ve never been able to articulate it.

Giving someone naughty pictures is a form of having sex with them. So bringing in a third party against their will is a form of assault.

I’m not seeing sending pictures as sex.  In some very specific scenarios, sure, but not in general.  Maybe I’m in the minority and others here can point out my oblivion to social norms.  Maybe others can also set me straight on cultural views on what is generally considered assault v. harassment.  For me, the term, culturally speaking, is strongly informed by its usage as a legal term (media/police reports).

An obligation?  No.  But comparable to the reasonable person standard that the court uses, what is the Not a Douchebag standard that we should use in society?  What would someone who is not a douchebag do with sexy pictures/videos they didn’t ask for but were sent anyway?  They would maybe delete them, download them to their porn folder on their computer, ask the person not to send anymore, maybe even tell the person’s friends to tell the person not to send anymore, if she was doing it after repeated requests to stop, maybe it would be not particularly douche-y to make fun of her in a social situation for having sent them.  But sending them to other people knowing it would ruin her is a douchebag thing to do.

Until we treat this like a douchebag thing to do on par with with social ostricization that comes with dog fighting, there won’t be a reason for douchebags to not do it.

to me he’s a hero.

Seriously?

She made several explicit tapes of herself and sent them to him via cell phone. Was he under any obligation to keep this private? No.

Again… seriously?

Of course there’s an obligation to keep that private.  Unless she actually gave permission for them to be shared with anyone else, this is unethical.  It doesn’t matter if it was a one-time online hookup or a spouse of several years.  You’re appropriating someone else’s body.

Was he under any obligation to keep this private?

The fact that she sent him those videos? No, although that would be the decent choice. The videos themselves? Yes. Because no matter the number of times they shared sexual activity or the length of their acquaintance (and: wondering what numbers are big enough to cross your ‘assumed privacy’ threshold), she shared that activity, specifically those videos, with him. She didn’t post them online for everyone in the world—she sent them to one person who she felt safe enough to share sex with. And he betrayed that trust. It’s not that different from the stories of frat houses with sex rooms with spyholes, where guys can effectively lie about privacy to a woman who has no idea that her intimate activity will be witnessed by an unknown group of men without her knowledge or consent.  Key word there… consent.

D, the Carrie Prejean example is clear-cut “having sex” in my view.  The high school girls, not so much.  But with this post, I’m trying to get out of the tendency to see how much one is “allowed” to do---the focus on technicalities and legalities---and look at the social and ethical issues at stake.  A bunch of school administrators seeing pictures of teenage girls acting sexual and deciding to gang up on the girls and make them grovel is behavior that’s eerily reminiscent of the “logic” of gang rape or this this situation in Brazil where a group of mostly male students, high on moral outrage at a female student in a short skirt, demanded that the administrators turn her over for a gang rape. 

These situations where private pictures are released, and the girls or women in them are punished while the man who set out to humiliate them is protected, tells you a lot about our rape culture.  But we’re not seeing it, because we haven’t taken the time to step back and see the connections between picture releasing and sexual assault.  But the parallels are there, and you really see how a lot of sexual assailants justify their behavior by suggesting the victim was asking for it by being tempting.

Whatever, pablo.  He’s not some stand-up defender of gay rights.  He’s a guy bragging about how he got some girl to fuck him, and enjoying calling her a whore in front of the world.  He’d do it to any woman that he had a chance to.

Also, I’m a blogger, not a lawyer. It should be understood that I’m not writing the law, but talking about cultural understanding of right and wrong.

Understood.

I agree with you that this should be treated as sexual assault.

But honestly… I give it about a million to one shot against it ever being legally classified as such.

There is one point that didn’t seem to be brought up by a lot of people when it was initially reported that the videos were taken when Prejean was 17… if that in fact was the case, any distribution or possession of the materials in question could be criminally prosecuted as violations of child pornography laws.  The law is unambiguous in this regard - one day under 18 years of age and it’s illegal, period.  However, one ridiculous aspect of child pornography laws is that if Prejean really was 17 at the time of the filming, she could conceivably be prosecuted as well, since she manufactured the material, and did so concensually.

Legal precedent exists here - a group of six Pennsylvania teens were brought up on child porn charges earlier this year, three boys and three girls.  The child porn in question involved pictures the girls had taken of themselves and sent via cellphone to the boys.  Guess who got the stiffer indictments?  The girls, who were charged with manufacture, dissemination, AND possession of child pornography, whereas the boys were only charged with possession.

Also, as far as legality goes… isn’t this at the very least a violation of copyright law?

The problem is that pictures and video are things, not people. It is literally objectification, in that it is making an object out of something dynamic and instantaneous. Anything that you want to be private should never, ever be preserved in such a way.

How is adding sex to the issue that the subject considers shameful any different from video taping someone embarrassingly demonstrating a hobby (there exists photographic evidence, somewhere, of my 3 years of Jazz-tap. I should rather prefer that not get out.) or taking a transcript of gossiping? It is still creating a physical copy of the private moment, and then presenting it to others is still done as an act of malice, to embarrass or shame the subject.

It is intensely unethical to release such a private document, to be sure. It is a violation of trust. But I think criminalizing betrayal, which using the language of sexual assault does, sets a very bad precedent. One where we could be calling consensual sex between two consenting adults sexual assault of a third person due to a deliberate effort on the part of the couple to cuckold a partner, using their public affair to shame, silence, control and belittle the other.

Law and ethics often intersect, but they are not mutually inclusive. There are things that need to be illegal that are not in themselves unethical, and there are things that are unethical that cannot be made illegal.

Again, I’m not talking about legal definitions.  I’m talking about shifting the focus from blaming the victim to blaming the person who deliberately harmed her.

karpad, I think most of us grasp that having sex with someone is private.  How is it different?  Well, for the same reason that poking someone with your penis on a train is different than poking someone with your finger.  I’m sure a lot of guys would like to see those activities conflated, but those guys are bad men, and they have ulterior motives.  As a society, we thankfully believe that sex is an activity that should be private and consensual, even if we don’t always live up to our standards.  Most people enter into sexual activities with the reasonable expectation of privacy they don’t have when it comes to, say, tap-dancing.

I absolutely consider texting dirty stuff to someone else to be a form of having sex with them, at least foreplay.  It falls under the same ethical guidelines as any other from of sex.

I feel the need to defend the man who exposed Prejean. You called him “the scum of the earth”, to me he’s a hero. I don’t think you could even call him her boyfriend. According to his interview on TMZ, they had an online relationship and had hooked up only once. She made several explicit tapes of herself and sent them to him via cell phone. Was he under any obligation to keep this private? No.

Not that Ms. Prejean has done a whole lot to build up her own credibility, but what makes you so willing to automatically trust the word of some random nobody who went blabbing to TMZ about a story involving a controversial celebrity, in the hopes of making a buck off the story?

I don’t know what the truth is regarding the exact nature of the Prejean sex video.  Obviously, I think her account of the events should be taken with a huge grain of salt; I also think the words of a shady profiteer talking to a gossip site like TMZ should also be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Tabloids and gossip sites occasionally get something right in their reporting.  More often that not, they don’t.  Or at least the story gets sensationalized and contorted quite a bit in the process to make it appear far more salacious than it really is.  These folks make money on feeding the bizarre compulsion of many common folks to both idolize and demonize famous people in the news.  Americans spend a fortune buying whatever pop culture crap it is that the celebrity sells, and yet at the same time, we love seeing them fall on their faces.

We both celebrate them and vilify them at the same time.  And websites like TMZ help enable us to do that.

Anyway, I’m not positive what the full truth is about these videos - when exactly they were filmed, how old Prejean really was, what the nature of her relationship with the guy involved was.

And I’m certainly not prepared to treat the guy’s version of events as absolute truth anymore than I’m willing to treat Prejean’s version as absolute truth.

Until we treat this like a douchebag thing to do on par with with social ostricization that comes with dog fighting, there won’t be a reason for douchebags to not do it.

Sadly, I don’t see that day coming anytime soon.

Why?  Because as dirty, salacious, and scummy as the porn industry mostly is… it’s still a massive industry.  And I mean massive.  I don’t know what the actual numbers are, but I think online porn accounts for a bigger percentage of total online commercial sales than any other single e-commerce industry.  It is a multi-billion dollar monstrosity.  And because of the First Amendment protections it is afforded, it will remain privately very acceptable, even though it is widely publicly ostracized.

By the way, I’m not 100% against all forms of pornography.  But the industry as a whole is pretty much a hotbed of misogyny and cultural slut-shaming.  And it ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Amanda in 13: I understand and nearly completely agree.  Just offering my personal editorial feed back.

I think it would help to define what “having sex” is.  I don’t think of it in terms of who puts what where.  It’s often a matter of intent and consent.  So forcing yourself on a woman is rape, not sex, because she didn’t consent.  But a porn actress isn’t having sex with her audience, because she’s performing sex not having it. 

But a private video made for an audience of one meets the intent and consent standards.  That’s why I wouldn’t be upset if a boyfriend watched porn online, but if he was exchanging naked pictures with a woman he met online, I’d be livid. 

Does that clarify things?

One thing, among many, that angers me about men distributing these photos and videos is the fact that, if I ever have a daughter, I have to teach her to never trust the men in her life.  That, no matter how long her relationship has lasted, if she ever wants a career in the public eye or just wants to maintain her privacy, she has to assume that her boyfriend or husband might someday use sexual photos or videos against her.  I’m used to not trusting men.  It makes me absolutely livid to have to teach young girls to do the same.

As a mom with a married 20-something son, who along with his wife are wired-in, as the saying goes, I try to tell them “Just say no to home porn”. (Photos, Vids, anything...) On the theory that ya never know if it would come out online, somehow, and a decade or so from now, their daughter, The World’s Cutest Grandbaby doesn’t need to find any naked depictions of them on the Net…

I do like Dan Savage’s description of what a man should do in order to get pictures like this.  It’s not enough to get naked pictures of a man for mutually assured destruction purposes, since there often are men in these pictures, and so we know they don’t get any flack for being exposed having sex.  But he suggests that men be put in a position that would be socially embarrassing for most---perhaps wearing women’s clothes with a dildo up your butt or something.  Now, he’s joking around, but he has a point.  I do think it’s interesting that when it comes to whether or not one is socially humiliated for dirty pictures depends on whether or not one’s sexuality in the pictures can be construed as feminine.  Women are feminine merely for being women, but men have to be made feminine before it’s humiliating.

How is adding sex to the issue that the subject considers shameful any different from video taping someone embarrassingly demonstrating a hobby (there exists photographic evidence, somewhere, of my 3 years of Jazz-tap. I should rather prefer that not get out.) or taking a transcript of gossiping?

I dunno, why do we treat parents who pressure their kids into taking jazz-tap lessons any differently from parents who pressure their kids into sex?

It’s true that some things which seem like an invasion of privacy can cease to be so over time. If someone stepped out of a time machine and told me that 20 years from now, when a man posts homemade porn of his ex to the internet, nobody cares (except maybe a few friends who email her to express their condolences for her ex being a petty douchebag), I’d be willing to believe it. But that has nothing to do with how much of an attack on the videos’ subject it currently is to do that.

(I agree with whoever said that ‘sexual assault’ sounds like an invocation of a specific legal category that this doesn’t belong to. But “harrassment”? Geez, that’s a little mild.)

This post reminds me of a report I heard fourth-hand about a year ago.  I wonder if anyone else has heard it, to confirm or add to these details. 

Catholic high school or middle school in north Jersey.  Provocative pictures of a girl--semi-nude or in lingerie.  The pictures were on Facebook behind a privacy wall.  A boy in the same class, who I think was some kind of ex-boyfriend, encouraged his friends to check out these images.

Their male teacher pulled down the Power Point screen in class and showed the kids’ peers the photos.  “See what happens, girls?  SEE what kind of world we live in?  If I can see them, anyone can see them.  You CANNOT allow these pictures to exist online.  If you do, this is what will happen.  We’re in a dangerous world.” (The person who told me the story said that this school had required all students to make their social networking sites accessible to administrators.)

Needless to add, no punishment for the boy who had told his friends to look at the pictures.  I think the school treated him as a brave whistleblower.  High five, dude.

The girls’s parents, bless ‘em, stood up for their daughter and demanded that the school reprimand the teacher.  The school backed the teacher to the hilt.  The family withdrew the girl from school and moved away.

As a mom with a married 20-something son, who along with his wife are wired-in, as the saying goes, I try to tell them “Just say no to home porn”

Well, that is a conversation I never want to have with my mom.  Shudders.

Thinking about it, I don’t think it’s sexual assault. I think it’s abuse and part and parcel in this current society of the tools of an abuser to belittle, shame, and exert control over their victim or to punish them. Mostly the latter.

I think this is especially apparent in the actions of the school board and most school boards these days that go out of their way to find evidence of sexual women in order to shame, belittle, and control all women. The motivations of most of the leaks of private videos and pictures seem to have a lot in common with the general MRA tactics and also the tactics of an abusive ex-boyfriend and often have the same motivation.

I think this occurs and has this weight is also because of our fucked up views about sex. Abusers couldn’t use these physical evidences of sex and sexuality if there wasn’t an infrastructure set up to shame and dehumanize and punish anyone for whom this evidence turns up. In this, it relies on the same fucked up culture that is against abortion access. I think if this culture didn’t exist, this particular tool of the abuser toolkit would lose all power. I mean, if the cultural response to the leak of sex pictures or sex movies was “so? We’ve all had sex.” Then there’d be no social reward to the abuser to use this against the woman.

Unfortunately in this world, this simple matter of evidence of sexuality is used as a giant targeting radar for the slut-shaming patriarchy that seeks to stamp out and punish all sexual women with the entirety of their evil passion.

So yeah.

That all being said, I think the Carrie Prejean case gets complicated, because there is an abuser using the evidence of her sexuality to shame a casual fling and get himself some side scratch, but it also serves as a beautiful reminder of the hypocrisy of the anti-sex movement. With this same evidence, we have proof of what all sane people know. That is 99% of humans have a sexuality and that most who protest sexuality and stress their goodness and purity are often having the kinkiest sort of sexuality in private.

Carrie Prejean used the slut-shaming patriarchy to try and jump-start her career, denying the right of others to sexuality, claiming extraordinary purity, which was found in this evidence to be as most surmised, bullshit. The same is true of all the other “morality” types such as the school board who rely on the presumption of non-sexuality they carry for the moral gravitas to punish someone else for being sexual. It’s important to expose these people to the masses swayed by their presumptions, but how does one do that without the evidence of sexuality and thus on the actions of an abuser or a betrayer to make manifest?

As I said, complicated.

Whatever, pablo.  He’s not some stand-up defender of gay rights.  He’s a guy bragging about how he got some girl to fuck him, and enjoying calling her a whore in front of the world.  He’d do it to any woman that he had a chance to.

You know this for a fact?  I have to ask: If Mike Jones had had video of Ted Haggard and released it, would he also be the “scum of the eart”?

I fully agree that this is an incredibly douchey thing to do, that anyone who does it is betraying someone who trusts him or her, and that we should look down upon people who do it.

That being said, I can’t really get down with the contention that “this is a form of sexual assault.” For all that Amanda is saying she’s not making a legal argument here, or even talking about what the law should be, when you use legal terms you’re making an implicit legal argument.  “Sexual assault” is a legal term that has a fairly clear meaning, and I think it seriously muddies it up to try to call something like this “sexual assault.” Assault is about physical violence, not emotional harm.  You can’t assault someone by releasing a tape of them.

IANAL, but I believe that this kind of thing is probably illegal already - it is invasion of privacy.  It’d fall under “public disclosure of private facts,” and the victim can seek civil remedy.  There’s also potential “personality rights” issues if anyone tries to make money off such a tape.

I’ve never understood the motivation/desire ot have/give nekkid pictures of/to someone you;re sleeping with. You;ve got the real thing; you don’t NEED pictures. I’ve never knowingly participated in anything like that, because you can be 100% sure that someone other than the intended audience is going to see them. Yes, if it’s on purpose than the person showing them around is a horrible person. But it could just as easily happen by accident, and the ultimate result isn’t that different. If my boyfried deliberately showed the pictures, I’d think “What a bastard; he showed the pictures.” If he did it by accident, I’d think, “What a bastard; he failed to safeguard the pictures.” Not worth it. Never was, never will be, never could be.

I have to ask: If Mike Jones had had video of Ted Haggard and released it, would he also be the “scum of the eart”?

Yes.

pablo, your analogy is misplaced in several ways.  But I’d agree that if anyone aired video of Carrie Prejean engaging in lesbian sex--the genuine kind, not Two Hot Chixxxx Get It On--I’d be less upset, because the hypocrisy point would be clear.  Prejean isn’t a hypocrite.  She just got slut-shamed for being a woman who had sex.

It’s important to expose these people to the masses swayed by their presumptions, but how does one do that without the evidence of sexuality and thus on the actions of an abuser or a betrayer to make manifest?

This is what I was thinking myself as I worked my way through Amanda’s piece, and it’s difficult, as you say, because I do agree that releasing those pictures and that video is morally reprehensible. Then again, so is sexual hypocrisy, especially when you set yourself up as a public example of fundamentalist sexual values. Does the ability to expose the hypocrite justify the release of the photos? I don’t know--I’d never want to be put in the position to make that call. Ends-justifying-the-means arguments always make me nauseous.

Assault doesn’t have to be a purely “physical” construct.  For example, brandishing a firearm at someone is considered an assault in many (most?) jurisdictions.  There is no physical harm done - the harm was causing the other person psychological harm (to wit, causing them to fear for their lives).  I believe it is reasonable to assert that an assault can be psychological in nature, in which case Amanda’s position would be legally tenable.  And I’m inclined to agree with her.

Of course, I’m not an attorney, either.

One reason for making such images when “you’ve got the real thing”: long-distance relationships. If you and your partner don’t get to see each other very often, pictures could be a pleasurable reminder.

Whether it’s prudent is another matter: but there’s a risk in letting people into my home, too.

Do you think Mike Jones was a scumbag for exposing Ted Haggard?

One of the main reasons Ted Haggard made a [handsome] living and had access to the President of the US was his very public campaign against homosexuality. You can argue that exposing his hypocrisy was a public service.

As far as I know, Ms. Prejean has never claimed she’s a virgin/abstinent. There’s no heroism in making public irrelevant intimate details just so you can embarrass a former partner.

pablo, your analogy is misplaced in several ways.  But I’d agree that if anyone aired video of Carrie Prejean engaging in lesbian sex--the genuine kind, not Two Hot Chixxxx Get It On--I’d be less upset, because the hypocrisy point would be clear.  Prejean isn’t a hypocrite.  She just got slut-shamed for being a woman who had sex.

Really?

I don’t think that would necessarily be any less inappropriate or unethical.  I mean, it would make her look like an even bigger hypocrite, but the whole point of this discussion is to put aside Carrie Prejean’s personal hypocrisy.  People are getting a sense of schadenfreude over this affair specifically because of Prejean’s offensive public opinions, but Amanda’s argument is that this is an assault on Prejean’s sexual privacy.  Had the act been one of lesbian sex instead of solo masturbation, would it make it any less an assault on her sexual privacy?  You do realize that the person that she was having sex with in the video was herself, right?  It was a solo video of her masturbating.  It wasn’t video of her having sex with a man.

Is showing someone else the dirty pictures your ex-girlfriend sent you really comparable to threatening someone with a firearm?  Obviously you’re right that I oversimplified, but the issue is that when you point a gun at someone you are not just causing psychological harm.  You are making a credible threat to physically harm the person.  Assault has to do with physical harm.  It doesn’t necessarily mean you are actually causing physical harm, but you at least have to be threatening someone with physical harm for it to be assault.  That’s not going on here.  To say that this kind of thing amounts to assault, specifcally, still seems like a massive broadening of the concept of assault to the point of meaninglessness.

Again, this is not to say that this isn’t a reprehensible act.  It is.  It should be illegal, and probably (?) already is.  I’d be open to at least debating the idea that it should be criminalized, but I just can’t see how you can say it’s sexual assault.

DTG, I didn’t say it would be right--I think it would be less BAD, because there’d be some point to it.  What happened to Prejean was wrong and despicable with no redeeming features.  Releasing a private videotape of her having sincere, un-stagey lesbian sex would be wrong but with the redeeming feature of exposing her hypocrisy.  So yeah, “less inappropriate or unethical,” even though I’d still be repulsed.

If not sexual assault, then this is definitely sexual harassment.

A culture that both encourages women to be sexual and then punishes them for the same sexual behavior is not only hypocrital, but harassing.

However, Prejean brought this on herself: not just sending the video out, but in promoting the bigotry toward the sexual orientation of others.

Do you think Mike Jones was a scumbag for exposing Ted Haggard?

One of the main reasons Ted Haggard made a [handsome] living and had access to the President of the US was his very public campaign against homosexuality. You can argue that exposing his hypocrisy was a public service.

As far as I know, Ms. Prejean has never claimed she’s a virgin/abstinent. There’s no heroism in making public irrelevant intimate details just so you can embarrass a former partner.

I disagree.

Ms. Prejean never explicitly stated her stance on abstinence, but her involvement in the evangelical Christian community and her espousing that she is a devout Christian who believes in Christian teachings implicitly suggests that she does at least laterally believe in the Christian Right’s teachings on abstinence before marriage.

That said, the issue isn’t Prejean’s hypocrisy.  And the video does indeed reveal her to be a hypocrite.  Opposition to same-sex marriage is her pet cause, but that cause is wrapped in her supposed adherence to Christian teachings on sexuality.

While Ted Haggard is a scumbag and I am glad that his hypocrisy was exposed, I think it would have been a total violation of his sexual privacy to release videos of him engaging in homosexual activities, if such videos had ever been made privately.

The issue here is the fundamental right to sexual privacy, even for hypocrites.  Exposing private nude photographs or videos of someone engaged in a sexual act without their permission is wrong, regardless of the character of the person being exposed.

Due to the fact that we live in a patriarchy, this is an issue that harms far more women than it would ever harm men, and the focus should primarily be on the harm it does towards women.  That said, while certainly far more rare, you can’t argue that Haggard doesn’t deserve the same basic right to sexual privacy simply because he’s male.  Men very rarely get raped, and framing the issue as being one that equally affects both men and women would be ridiculous and offensive.  But that doesn’t mean that the rare instances in which men do get raped should be excused or tolerated (and no, I’m not equating non-consensual exposure of private sex videos with rape, just stating that Haggard’s gender and hypocrisy shouldn’t revoke his basic rights to sexual privacy in this regard).

@jlk7e I didn’t “compare” the two.  I was merely making the point that causing someone psychological harm *is* an assault.  Your assertion that an assault must be physical in nature is not based on a true understanding of the concept, apparently.  “Battery” is the physical manifestation of an assault.  An assault merely has to induce fear in another of harm.  In some jurisdictions the law may state that it has to be an inducement of the fear of physical harm, but there are places where that’s not the case, and I think it would be legally tenable to construct a psychological harm as an assault.

While Ted Haggard is a scumbag and I am glad that his hypocrisy was exposed, I think it would have been a total violation of his sexual privacy to release videos of him engaging in homosexual activities, if such videos had ever been made privately.

In Haggard’s case, though, there was other corroborating evidence to back up the charges made against him--receipts and the like. If there hadn’t been, it would have been a he-said/he-said case and it would have likely blown over after a while. In Prejean’s case, the evidence of hypocrisy consists of pictures and video. I’m still not saying I’m comfortable with the release of the pictures, no matter what the end result, because I’m not, but there is something to the idea that when people set themselves up as public figures, particularly as sexual scolds, then there’s 1) a lowered expectation of privacy and 2) they’re held to a higher standard of behavior.

Amanda @ 4:

Giving someone naughty pictures is a form of having sex with them. So bringing in a third party against their will is a form of assault.

What? I say again, what?

No offense, Amanda, but good luck getting the above argument to stand up in a court of law.

What’s happening to Prejean now is a perfect example of “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it” as I seriously doubt anyone forced her to make the video in question, much less distribute it to her ex who could then easily turn it viral.

If Prejean didn’t understand the risks of doing so, I have little sympathy for her.

“However, Prejean brought this on herself: not just sending the video out, but in promoting the bigotry toward the sexual orientation of others.”

OK, but it wasn’t the “culture” that disseminated the video. It was a specific person, and your formulation once again writes him out of the equation.

I just wanted to point that out because I think it’s so easy to do. I mean, you’re clearly a passionate feminist and I really enjoy your comments here, but even for smart, passionate feminists, it can be easy to write the assaulter out of the equation. The cultural map for this dialogue is so strong that it’s hard to defy.

I agree with Jeff here that it’s about time that we started viewing the release of privately made sexual photographs and videos to anyone other than their intended audience as a form of sexual assault. The motivation to do so is indistinguishable from that as a rapist---using sex as a tool to dominate and humiliate someone, while puffing up your own sense of power---and often the results could be even worse for the victim, because her assault was performed in front of a crowd.  And I agree with Jeff that we need to consider Carrie Prejean’s ex-boyfriend the scum of the earth for releasing this video, and it’s true that it’s a case of sex being used against a woman to silence and humiliate her, as she’s claimed.

There is no possible way that you can say that rape and distributing sex tapes are more or less the same.  One involves physically attacking someone, and the other does not.  This makes all the difference in the world.

I’m not saying that we should allow people to distribute sexual photographs of other people, or that doing so should go unpunished.  Ideally, we wouldn’t let people distribute sexual photographs at all.  But it’s ridiculous to describe this as “sexual assault”. 

Just as rape creates a general loss of freedom for women, who have to control their associations and movements out of fear that it will happen, this form of sexual assault also creates a loss of freedom. In all cases, men should consider how this loss of freedom is wrong not just because it hurts women, but also because it hurts them.  When women know that some assholes are out there, waiting to punish and humiliate you if you express yourself a little bit, you don’t express yourself.  And the men who might be the beneficiaries of your enthusiastic, consensual self-expression don’t get that.  In this case, every use of dirty pictures to punish and humiliate women results in more women deciding that they will never, ever take and send such pictures.

“Express yourself” is a very nice euphemism for “take obscene pictures of yourself and distribute them”.  While the threat of having obscene pictures you’ve taken of yourself distribued to others may deter people from taking them, this is obviously not an ethical way of discouraging it.  Obscenity laws would work much better.

No offense, Amanda, but good luck getting the above argument to stand up in a court of law.

What’s happening to Prejean now is a perfect example of “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it” as I seriously doubt anyone forced her to make the video in question, much less distribute it to her ex who could then easily turn it viral.

I don’t believe Amanda was necessarily trying to construct a legal argument that this should be prosecuted in the legal system as criminal assault, but that culturally it should be framed as assault.

As for Ms. Prejean’s consent, the issue isn’t whether or not she willingly made the video or willingly sent it to her ex-boyfriend.  The issue is whether or not sending such videos to another person should be considered consent for them to share those videos with others, even when such consent was not explicitly given.

While a reasonable case can be made that it is foolish and naive to make and send these videos with the expectation that there is no chance of them ever being leaked, that doesn’t exonerate the person who leaks them of their disgusting and abusive behavior.

People say women shouldn’t walk through dark alleys alone at night wearing short skirts.  And while I agree that such activity might not be wise, it doesn’t mean that if someone rapes the short-skirt wearing woman in the dark alley that the rapist should be able to defend their action by saying “well, if she didn’t want to get raped, she shouldn’t have been dressed slutty in that dark alley.”

Much the same, while you can argue that it it might not be a good idea to send sex videos of yourself to lovers, that doesn’t mean that the ex-lover should be allowed to freely distribute it and then say, “If she didn’t want me to be an asshole and put this video online, she shouldn’t have sent it to me.”

It’s the same victim-blaming mentality as rape apology.  “If she didn’t want her sluttiness exposed, she shouldn’t have made a private video of herself acting like such a slut.”

Carrie Prejean is a lousy human being, and deserves to be publicly scorned for her assholish attitude towards people in the LGBT community.  Her shitty intolerant attitude does not give others the right to abuse her by making her privately-made sex videos public without her consent.

It’s eye for an eye thinking, and it ain’t good for society.  Carrie Prejean did a bad thing, so it’s OK that someone else did a bad thing to her.  That’s the logic being employed by those who think this is acceptable.  It’s the same type of logic used by wingnuts to justify the use of torture on terrorist detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.

I’m not saying that we should allow people to distribute sexual photographs of other people, or that doing so should go unpunished.  Ideally, we wouldn’t let people distribute sexual photographs at all.

Wait, what?

Is showing someone else the dirty pictures your ex-girlfriend sent you really comparable to threatening someone with a firearm?  Obviously you’re right that I oversimplified, but the issue is that when you point a gun at someone you are not just causing psychological harm.

Two points… when someone brandishes a firearm at a person, but they don’t fire and they don’t physically strike them in any way, the only harm ultimately caused after the affair is over is psychological, assuming the perpetrator took no other actions like robbing the person.

Which isn’t meant to minimize it by any means, and I fully support prosecuting someone who would point a firearm at someone else to intimidate them.  But the ultimate damage done is psychological.  The victim wasn’t physically harmed, and the victim wasn’t materially harmed by loss of any material possessions.  What was taken from the victim was peace of mind and a sense of personal safety.  All psychological.

As for the comparison, I don’t think it was necessarily meant to suggest that exposing a private nude video of someone is as severe as pointing a gun at them in terms of the harm done.  By the same token, knocking you out with a punch isn’t as severe as blowing your brains out with a gun.  And while the legal system is far more harsh on the murderer than they are on the person who merely commits physical battery, that doesn’t mean that battery isn’t still considered a crime, even though murder is obviously a more severe crime.

There is no possible way that you can say that rape and distributing sex tapes are more or less the same.  One involves physically attacking someone, and the other does not.  This makes all the difference in the world.

She didn’t.  She said that the thinking involved is more or less the same in both cases, not that the offense itself was more or less the same or that the harm done was equal in gravity.

Much the same, if I point a gun at you and threaten to blow your brains out, the thinking involved on my part is similar to thinking I would be employing if I took a 2x4 and smashed it over your head and beat the shit out of you.  Obviously, in the latter case, I’ve done you more harm and my crime will be punished more severely, but the type of thinking I used in both cases is very similar - a desire to intimidate you through either the threat or action of physical harm.

Now I’m curious:  what _is_ the relevant legal category that covers “violation of privacy”?  Or is “violation of privacy” the actual name for it?  And is something like “violation of sexual privacy” covered by law?  If anything, it seems like it _isn’t_, because possession of certain forms of pornography has been criminalized.  But then there are laws against voyeurism… It seems like this kind of act falls into a seam between laws restricting pornography and laws protecting privacy. 

It does feel to me that what Prejean’s boyfriend did was _wrong_, but what does the “assault” frame get you that “violation of privacy” doesn’t?  Or is it the sad-but-true phenomenon that Americans care less and less about “violation of privacy” but at least a fair amount about sex crimes, so that pushing the case in the direction of sex crimes helps to raise consciousness about its offensiveness?

Glad you wrote this!  I have been really upset over the whole Prejean thing.  Here are the main issues driving me nuts:

-She is being sexually humiliated.
-Liberals are cheering this on.
-I love Keith Olbermann and he is really testing my limits with his obsession over her, and his sexually humiliating jokes at her expense.  He needs to stop this NOW.
-Prejean herself was almost on the edge of making some good points, probably accidently, when all of a sudden she veered off into crazy land and started claiming that only con women are subjected to this and it’s because they’re cons, not becaue they’re women. 

The last point is the most infuriating.  If women would stick up for other women who are on the receiving end of sexist behavior, regardless of idealogy, we might get somewhere.  Instead we have Palin and Prejean out there claiming that they are victims of “liberals” rather than the truth which is they are victims of sexism, as was Hillary Clinton, as are so many women in politics or the public arena.

I believe they do this to kiss up to con men who love the idea that it’s okay to call Hillary Clinton a CUNT or start a anti-hillary group with the initials C.U.N.T.. 

I really hate them for it.  I mean, I actually began to really hate Prejean when I saw her making these absurd, anti-feminist, anti-women claims while at the same time hiding behind her twisted version of feminisn in order to whine about her victimhood.

Yes, it is sexual assault---because it is giving someone access to another person’s body.  It’s assault in much the same way that a boyfriend saying to his friends, “come fuck my girlfriend when she’s passed out and won’t notice” is assault.  The “won’t notice” part doesn’t make it OK.

And, thing is, she DOES notice in many cases---Carrie Prejean certainly suffered consequences here, as did the schoolgirls in the above examples.  It is character assassination, and an invasion on an intimate level---the level of sex---for all that nobody actually physically touched her. 

The physical consequences of rape are rarely much of the reason why it is so hurtful, why it is a crime.  If a rapist coerces sex without violence, or rapes an unconscious woman with a condom on, causing no injury and transmitting no STDs, it is still rape.  The big thing is generally the emotional pain that is inflicted, the fear and humiliation and sense of being defiled, and everything else that a woman could feel after being raped. 

That, and that it reinforces the rapist’s belief that women are objects for his consumption, and that hurting, humiliating and using them makes for a good orgasm, thus putting other women in more danger from him in the future.  He has stepped into a harmful social role, and its mindset will permeate his other dealings with women, and help to color the views of other men who encounter him, thus helping to create a more oppressive environment for women.

Moreover, the social results of a made-public sex tape or photos create a hostile social environment for that particular woman which she may never be able to escape---people will judge her, employers may not hire her, men with no understanding of context or boundaries will decide that she must be easy and slutty, and find it more acceptable/worthwhile to harass her and coerce her for sex---many aspects of this society love a convenient target to abuse, and leaking a sex tape functions to deliberately set someone up to be abused by others---the same concept as pushing someone out into traffic, or framing them for a crime.

pablo, I admit that it would be complicated for me if he had done so precisely to out him as a hypocrite.  But this guy has indeed admitted that he got the pictures from a genuine sexual interaction many years ago.  I doubt that this is the first time he’s shown them off against her will.

I’m not saying that we should allow people to distribute sexual photographs of other people, or that doing so should go unpunished.  Ideally, we wouldn’t let people distribute sexual photographs at all.

Wait, what?

It’s Austin, the douchebag who thinks we should imprison women for exercising their reproductive rights.

Ignore him, he ain’t worth your time.

Snore, CHV.  I already said this was a cultural, not a legal argument.  I am a writer, not a lawyer.  Rinse, repeat until you get it.

But if we started to see this as a form of sexual assault, then some things would change.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where some teenage boy gives naked pictures of his supposed girlfriend to a principal, and the boy get suspended and delivered a lecture on the importance of respecting someone’s right to bodily autonomy, even if they’re female?

“That being said, I can’t really get down with the contention that “this is a form of sexual assault.”

That’s because it never happened to you.  Something similar happened to me.  I thought about killing the person who did it.  Sometimes, I still think about it.

It felt like rape. 

Call it whatever you want.  But make sure you hope it never happens to you, or to your daughter.

“Express yourself” is a very nice euphemism for “take obscene pictures of yourself and distribute them”.  While the threat of having obscene pictures you’ve taken of yourself distribued to others may deter people from taking them, this is obviously not an ethical way of discouraging it.  Obscenity laws would work much better.

Um, hello?  We are discussing solving the ACTUAL problem of violating people’s privacy here, not the non-problem of people expressing a legitimate part of their lives and selves.

What makes these pictures ‘obscene,’ anyway, aside from your bullshit decision that there’s something wrong with women being sexual human beings?  ‘Obscene’ is a values judgment based on shitty values.

Get lost, we’re trying to do some good in the world here.

Is showing someone else the dirty pictures your ex-girlfriend sent you really comparable to threatening someone with a firearm?

Now you’re arguing about degree, not kind. 

I argued that this is on the sexual assault spectrum.  Grabbing someone’s ass is not as big a crime as rape, but it’s a similar kind of crime.  Slapping someone is lesser than puncher someone, but it’s on the spectrum.  In all the ways that count, releasing sexual pictures given to you privately as a sex act to the world at large is most like sexual assault, because it’s using sex to dominate and humiliate someone. 

I’m not making a legal argument, so I’d appreciate if people didn’t take it that way. Sometimes you get the impression that people think feminist bloggers are the law itself and we can say right here and now how much coercion you can get away with without going to jail. 

What I want is for people to acknowledge that the act of releasing these pictures is an attempt to hurt and humiliate someone, and the motivations are indistinguishable from other forms of sexual coercion.  The sooner we see that, the better.  Part of the reason I think it’s easy for me to see is I recall that after I was sexually assaulted, a friend of mine told me that the guy who assaulted me once showed her naked pictures of his ex-girlfriend, pictures that she knows damn well were supposed to be private.  She said it set off alarms, but only after he actually assaulted a woman (in the legal sense) did she realize the connection.  Men who do this are sending up a red flag, and we shouldn’t ignore it.

-I love Keith Olbermann and he is really testing my limits with his obsession over her, and his sexually humiliating jokes at her expense.  He needs to stop this NOW.

+1

I love Olbermann, too, but he should really stick to substantive policy issues and the fight for healthcare reform - he’s been great with that stuff.  This matter, not so much.  To be fair, it isn’t just him doing it, but also Michael Musto, his partner in Prejean slut-shaming, the gay Village Voice gossip columnist who is only slightly less obnoxious and annoying than Perez Hilton.

Austin @48: Your prudery is showing.  Sexual expression is a legitimate form of expression.  I’m a big fan of people using media to express their exhibitionist/sexual side.  My very narrow critiques of porn have been about the anti-woman tropes contained within, but in theory, I’m very pro the idea of porn.  I think it says absolutely nothing about a person’s moral worth if they get their kicks showing off for a camera.  It’s a kink like any other.

@ DTG:  Just the other day I started to feel what Gary Larson called a “cumulative attack of the willies” about how much fun Olbermann has been having with the Prejean story.  I mean, I think Prejean is ridiculous and her sense of martyrdom is completely over the top, but I don’t think we need to see that footage of her in the white bikini every damn day.

And I don’t find Michael Musto funny either, regardless of subject.  I think he’s trying to do some kind of Rickles-esque insult-comedy act, but it mostly comes across to me as, well, being a dick.

DTG - yes, I always forget Musto’s name, but it is always worse when KO has him on, you’re right.  But KO should know better, i always thought he was kind of a feminist.  Maybe I was wrong.

Ugh, when I was 17, I let one of my boyfriends take pictures of me, against my better judgment (he had given me alcohol and probably marijuana to “loosen me up” beforehand). This particular boyfriend was very emotionally abusive; he called me ugly, pressured me into doing things I didn’t want to do, and isolated me from my friends and family. Lo and behold, from the day I broke up with him until about 1 year later, he threatened to show the pictures to other people. To this day, the photos are still probably circulating and god knows who has seen them. His dad? His dad’s 50 year old friends? Does he look at them and show his friends, even though they are all 30 years old at this point? This happened about 11 years ago and it is even more scary to me, because now he can scan the pictures online and disseminate them to hundreds of people with the click of a mouse. I wonder if this would be considered child pornography at this point, since I was a minor when the pictures were taken and if he distributed the photos now, people over the age of 18 would see them?

KO should know better, i always thought he was kind of a feminist.

@ AnglScarlett:  Bob Somerby (of DailyHowler.com) has always classified Olbermann with Chris Matthews as male media stars who have issues with women.  He used to do a what’s-in-the-tabloids segment that came in for particular opprobrium with Somerby because of how often the tone was bitterly disdainful.  And the pro-Hillary blogosphere found Olbermann particularly obnoxious during the primary season, alleging that he held anti-feminist views.

Nikkole318, yes, it’s legally child pornography.  If you’re worried about it, you might let him know that if he distributes them, he is on the hook for child porn.  I’d hate to threaten someone, but if you’re sincerely worried, he might benefit from knowing the severe consequences that are possible for distributing those pictures.

Flip - I’ve read some Somerby and I’m not his biggest fan, though I am the first to admit he makes some excellent points.  But he also makes mistakes and i disagree with him often enough.  I watched KO all through the primary, and as far as Mathews goes, one of my favorite things that I ever wrote that got published (albeit online for free lol) was about what a dipshit he was and his sexism towards Hillary.  I didn’t see it too much in KO though - he did go over board a couple of times with the hysteria much of liberalism was feeling about that drawn-out primary.  Most notably when he gave his nearly shrieking special comment about Hillary’s statement that Bobby Kennedy was still running in June or something like that.  YOu know the whole - OMG SHE IS HOPING OBAMA GETS SHOT thing.

Charles Pierce (love him) once wrote about some incident that happened at ESPN when KO worked there.  Apparently the support staff comprised mostly of women, were being sexually harrassed and KO threatened to walk if their concerns were not addressed.  I don’t know all of the details, but I think that’s where I got the idea he was a feminist from.  Is it wrong to say that once in a while when he is talking, I remember that he has a gf he began dating when she was a student at Columbia and he was about 50, or nearing 50?  Because I cant’ help that.  And when he makes comments about whether Prejean used “two fingers or three” in her “sex tape” (that I guess she was masturbating in), then I do think of that.  And I wonder.

I just don’t buy him as an actual anti-feminist.  Not yet…

What I want is for people to acknowledge that the act of releasing these pictures is an attempt to hurt and humiliate someone, and the motivations are indistinguishable from other forms of sexual coercion.  The sooner we see that, the better.  Part of the reason I think it’s easy for me to see is I recall that after I was sexually assaulted, a friend of mine told me that the guy who assaulted me once showed her naked pictures of his ex-girlfriend, pictures that she knows damn well were supposed to be private.  She said it set off alarms, but only after he actually assaulted a woman (in the legal sense) did she realize the connection.  Men who do this are sending up a red flag, and we shouldn’t ignore it.

This, times a thousand.

I think the problem people are having in this debate is that they keep focusing on Carrie Prejean, when it really isn’t about her.  To a degree it’s understandable why this is happening, because Carrie Prejean is a public persona, and we already have a firmly imprinted opinion about her general character.  The ex-boyfriend is just the ex-boyfriend.  We don’t even know his name or anything about him, so it’s more difficult to put the focus on him, because he’s an anonymous random faceless dude.  Instead, we keep focusing on Carrie Prejean, when the issue isn’t her or her character faults, none of which is particularly germane to the conversation.

It’s similar to the rampant misogyny frequently directed towards Ann Coulter by liberals.  She is an awful, awful, awful human being, and I’d be a liar iof I said that I’ve never slipped and said anything misogynistic about her, like calling her “mAnn Coulter” because of her protruding Adam’s apple.  I don’t do that anymore, and I’m careful to frame any criticism of her in non-misogynistic terms today.  But yeah, I’ve called her “mAnn Coulter” before, and I was wrong to do it.

The point is, even awful people have basic rights, and the fact that they may suck in many other areas of their life doesn’t mean those rights shouldn’t be defended.

If we were talking about a private sex video of a feminist public figure being exposed against her will, would we be nearly as conflicted in our willingness to consider it a form of sexual assault in a strictly cultural sense?  No.

The problem is the behavior of the perpetrator, and how we frame it in a cultural context.  The type of guy who shows private sexual videos of ex-girlfriends to their buddies is the same type of guy who would say that a woman in revealing clothing who acts flirty and gets raped deserved it, because she shouldn’t have been wearing slutty clothing and acting flirty.

Nobody is saying that exposing private nude videos is as severe a violation of someone’s sexual autonomy as actual rape, but that the thinking employed by the perpetrator used to justify that behavior is the exact same as the thinking employed by an acquaintance rapist who tries to justify their rape.

@ AnglScarlett:  Yes, I also don’t know if I fully agree with the Somerby assessment myself (and god knows Somerby is, shall we say, tenacious; he yells when people don’t discuss issues on his terms and he also yells when people _do_ discuss issues on his terms if they do it too late for his tastes).  I brought it up mostly as a data point about the idea that Olbermann has issues with women that go beyond his issues with Prejean, without intending to suggest that my views were the same.

Amanda @ 58:

I already said this was a cultural, not a legal argument.  I am a writer, not a lawyer.  Rinse, repeat until you get it.

You’re playing both sides of the fence, Amanda. On one hand, you say this is a cultural issue only to claim it should constitute sexual assault (which is a legal concept).

So which is it?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where some teenage boy gives naked pictures of his supposed girlfriend to a principal, and the boy get suspended and delivered a lecture on the importance of respecting someone’s right to bodily autonomy, even if they’re female?

Sure, but it would require a perfect world.

IMO, what this all comes down it (in the case of Carrie Prejean) is hypocrisy. People love to see it exposed, and why not?

Hypocrisy is like a cobra - tempt it often enough, and it will bite you regardless of social station.

And considering that Prejean embraced the right’s dressing her up as a holy martyr for the culture wars, should she be surprised when salacious elements of her past snapped back on her via an international medium (the web) that is almost lawless?

The same applies to anyone regardless of gender.

For example, were I running for office billing myself as a champion for family values, and a video I once sent to an old S.O. depicting us having raunchy sex in a McDonald’s bathroom were later leaked to the web, whom would I have to blame?

No one forced me to make the video, and I was foolish enough to leak it onto a media which could enable it to be shared internationally in a matter of seconds.

The answer is that I am ultimately responsible for my own behavior, and so is Carrie Prejean no matter how hard she tries to clad herself in saintly robes.

On one hand, you say this is a cultural issue only to claim it should constitute sexual assault (which is a legal concept).

Not just a legal concept.  We don’t pretend that people don’t get sexually assaulted in jurisdictions that don’t recognize it.

DTG - yes, I always forget Musto’s name, but it is always worse when KO has him on, you’re right.  But KO should know better, i always thought he was kind of a feminist.  Maybe I was wrong.

I think it’s a matter of gray area.

Clearly, KO’s behavior in regards to the Prejean matter are pretty misogynist, but by the same token, he’s been extremely vocal in calling out the rank misogyny of the assholes who are responsiblefor the Stupak Amendment.

I don’t think people are either total feminists are total misogynists.  Most people lie somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.  In his staunch defense of reproductive rights, Olbermann is very much a feminist; in other ways, he clings to good old fashioned misogynist tropes, namely in his attacks on some conservative women like Carrie Prejean.

I consider myself a still evolving feminist, but at the same time, as I revealed upthread, I used to gleefully join in with others in referring to Ann Coulter in very demeaning terms that were intended to shame her in a sexual manner.

For most people, particularly men, I think some evolution is involved.  At least that has been the case for me.  I was born and raised in a household with a staunchly anti-choice father, and as a kid and teenager, I was a full-blown anti-choicer, even went to the annual January anti-choice marches in Washington in my youth.  I joined in the right-wing paranoia surrounding Bill Clinton early in his presidency as a young college student, but started getting turned off by it when the Lewinsky scandal was in the news.  I was politically apathetic at the end of Clinton’s presidency, and pretty indifferent about the 2000 presidential election.  Bush seemed like an idiot to me, but I wasn’t particularly impressed by Al Gore, either.  I voted for Gore, but didn’t really care whether he won or not.  I did believe the way Bush became president was fucked up, but I wasn’t outraged by it… I didn’t really care one way or the other.  The buildup to Iraq is when I turned completely against my conservative upbringing, and my eyes really opened up.  I was still far from being truly feminist, but I was pro-choice by that point in time.  Yet I still mistakenly gave anti-choice advocates too much credit as well-intentioned people.  It has really been through reading this blog, Feministe, Feministing, and I Blame The Patriarchy (that one intimidated the shit out of me the first time I started reading it) that I became more conscious of how fucking pervasive the patriarchy is, and how much rape culture is still way too acceptable to too many people.

Anyway, becoming feminist for a lot of men is often a process that doesn’t happen overnight.  I think on the whole, Olbermann is much more of an ally than an opponent, but he still has some growing up to do.  Four years ago, I would have found his Prejean commentary generally amusing and I wouldn’t have seen the obvious misogyny right away.  Hell, four year ago I probably would have personally sought out the Prejean sex tape (I’m not proud to admit that).

DTG - thanks for the post.  Very interesting, all around.

I wonder if this would be considered child pornography at this point, since I was a minor when the pictures were taken and if he distributed the photos now, people over the age of 18 would see them?

Yes, absolutely, 100% it would legally be considered child pornography.

The law doesn’t care how old you are today, it cares how old you were at the time the photos were taken.  And if the subject in sexually lurid nude imagery is 17 years and 364 days old, the imagery is considered child pornography.  In all 50 states.  Unambiguously.

Though there are conflicting reports about Prejean’s actual age at the time the nude video of her was taken, what is known is that at least one celebrity sex tape website absolutely refused to touch the videos a week ago on advice from their lawyers… because if Prejean was actually 17 when the video was taken as she claims, then posting it online would not only get a website shut down, it would likely get the website owner sent to prison and put on a sex offender registry.

I don’t know if you have any way of getting a message to this ex-bf without contacting him directly, but if you could get a message to him without actually having to talk to him, you should let him know that if those videos ever do wind up online, you will immediately contact authorities and have him prosecuted for distribution of child pornography, and that he’ll wind up on a sex offender registry for the rest of his life if he does that.  Even if you don’t intend to actually follow through with such a threat, simply putting that out there could be enough to scare him out of ever posting the videos.

You’re playing both sides of the fence, Amanda. On one hand, you say this is a cultural issue only to claim it should constitute sexual assault (which is a legal concept).

So which is it?

Um, the latter should follow and enforce the former?  The former should be strengthened so as to lead to the latter?  It should be BOTH a cultural (only douchebag assholes pass along private videos/pictures) and a legal (there should be legal consequences to violating someone’s privacy in this matter) issue?  Sexual assault itself is both a cultural and legal concept (i.e. a hurtful attack on someone, as well as a violation of the law)?  Take your pick.

No one forced me to make the video, and I was foolish enough to leak it onto a media which could enable it to be shared internationally in a matter of seconds.

“Just spend your whole life not trusting anyone” is not a solution.  Especially when the problem consists of artificially creating consequences for an act that does not in itself cause any harm.

Incidentally, given that women are far more shamed and attacked for this sort of thing than men are, the same does not apply to anyone regardless of gender.  The consequences tend to be worse for women.

Sure, hypocrites should certainly be fair game over their hypocrisy.  But it should be limited ENTIRELY to “Zie fails at living up to the standards zie wants to apply to all of us"/"Zie rejects the standards zie wants to apply to all of us.” Part of being liberal and feminist means rejecting the moralist view of sexuality, and WE fail to uphold our own values if we take such things as an excuse to act like conservatives.  To do so is to concede their argument that visibly having a sexuality destroys your worth as a person.

Flip - I’ve read some Somerby and I’m not his biggest fan, though I am the first to admit he makes some excellent points.  But he also makes mistakes and i disagree with him often enough.  I watched KO all through the primary, and as far as Mathews goes, one of my favorite things that I ever wrote that got published (albeit online for free lol) was about what a dipshit he was and his sexism towards Hillary.  I didn’t see it too much in KO though - he did go over board a couple of times with the hysteria much of liberalism was feeling about that drawn-out primary.  Most notably when he gave his nearly shrieking special comment about Hillary’s statement that Bobby Kennedy was still running in June or something like that.  YOu know the whole - OMG SHE IS HOPING OBAMA GETS SHOT thing.

Olbermann was definitely a total Obamabot during the primaries, but I don’t think that in itself necessarily makes one a misogynist, contrary to what many PUMAs liked to claim.

His Special Comment was a bit over the top and unnecessary (though I do think Clinton shouldn’t have made the RFK reference), but it wasn’t misogynist.  I don’t think his 2008 primary war criticisms of Hillary Clinton were rooted in a disdain for her because she was a woman, but rather because she wasn’t Barack Obama.

But Tweety’s comments… yeah, he was a total douche.  Some of it for him was also fawning worship of Obama, because Barack Obama’s luscious voice apparantly sends tingles up his leg (one of the creepiest comments I’ve ever heard from any MSM journalist, and I was a devoted Obama supporter at the time), but he definitely made some totally misgynist attacks on Hillary Clinton in the process.

No one forced me to make the video, and I was foolish enough to leak it onto a media which could enable it to be shared internationally in a matter of seconds.

Yup, just like that dumb slut was foolish enough to wear that skimpy outfit to the frathouse party, get really wasted, and flirt with the cute fratboy who raped her an hour later.

No point in debating you on this.  But then again, you also think death penalty is morally justified simply because it is legal, so I’m not surprised this is how you see this issue.

I vehemently disagree.

Sure, but it would require a perfect world.

So why bother doing anything about it since it would require a perfect world, right?  Let’s just let teenage girls continue to be expelled from school for private actions while the boys who deliberately got them in trouble by telling the authorities about those private actions get off scott-free because, hey, it would require a perfect world for the school to act otherwise.

Besides, I’m sure those high school girls were hypocrites in some way, so it was perfectly fine to expel them and charge them with creating child pornography.

For example, were I a college student and after I got drunk and passed out at a party, whom would I have to blame?

The answer is that I am ultimately responsible for my own behavior

See? Just NO. Because you’re erasing the presence of the person who actually does something wrong, and in the context of leaking pictures, that person is the one who made the choice to expose the pictures and not the person who made the choice to have them taken.

Hang on: I don’t get it.

Why did the high school girls have to apologize to a bunch of coaches? What did they do that had anything to do with the athletics at their school?

Isn’t this a clear violation of fair use and copyright?

Kristin @ 81:

For example, were I a college student and after I got drunk and passed out at a party, whom would I have to blame? No one forced me to drink the alcohol, and I was foolish enough to do it in a place where I was surrounded by potential rapists. The answer is that I am ultimately responsible for my own behavior.

Apples and oranges.

Forced or coursed sex without consent (e.g. rape) is a crime; masturbating on video and forwarding the footage to your S.O. is not (unless it depicts a minor).

Lapse in judgment? Sure, but not a crime.

And again, amanda is not saying it should BE a crime. She’s saying it’s clearly unethical in the same way that rape is unethical. Learn to read.

And we all know currently defined crimes are the beginning and the end of moral judgment on behavior. I mean, before marital rape was illegal, it would have been apples and oranges to compare forcing sex on a virgin with forcing sex on your wife. Sure, husbands who forced sex on their wives were guilty of lapses in judgment, but it wasn’t a crime. And that’s the important thing.

@ felagund:  Apparently the girls were involved in athletics at the school; maybe the school had a strict policy about “conduct unbecoming” a school athlete?  It seems completely beside the point to me too but that’s the best idea I can come up with.

Randomly, I don’t like the concept of ‘prudery’, which is often used to slam women for not being sexy enough, setting them up to be slammed when they ARE sexual. In other news, why don’t we all write letters to Keith Olbermann telling him to leave women’s sex lives out of his reporting on their douchebaggery?

Apples and oranges.

Forced or coursed sex without consent (e.g. rape) is a crime; masturbating on video and forwarding the footage to your S.O. is not (unless it depicts a minor).

Lapse in judgment? Sure, but not a crime.

Goddammit, are you really this fucking dense?

The issue is not what Carrie Prejean did, which was to make a nude video of herself.

The issue is what her ex-boyfriend did, which is to take that video and share it with others without her permission.

You keep framing the argument as, “Well since Prejean was so stupid as to make a nude video of herself, she’s got no reason to be angry when the person she gave it to distributed it to others.” Even though it was clearly distributed AGAINST HER WILL.

When a woman dresses provacatively, gets intoxicated, and acts flirty at a party, is she responsible for the fact that some asshole decides to rape her in her inebriated state?

Of course not.

Just the same, even if you think that Prejean didn’t use the best judgment in making a nude video of herself and sending it to a boyfriend, does that necessarily make her responsible for the actions that her ex-boyfriend took in showing it to other people?  Does that give the boyfriend a right to show it to anyone he pleases, or to try to make money by selling it?

You are arguing that if she didn’t want the videotape being viewed by anyone else, she should never have made it - essentially placing the blame on her for the actions of the ex-boyfriend who showed it to others AGAINST HER WILL.

It’s the exact same thing as arguing that if a girl doesn’t want to be raped, she shouldn’t dress provacatively, get wasted, and act flirty around a bunch of horny fratboys - essentially placing the blame on her for the actions of her rapist, who forced himself on her AGAINST HER WILL.

For the 1,697,365th time, nobody is claiming that distributing a private sex tape against a woman’s will is equally bad as actually raping her, but that the rape-apologist logic used to exonerate the real perpetrator in both cases is PRECISELY the same.

You are arguing that it is Carrie Prejean’s fault that the tape got viewed by others, and she’s got no one to blame for that but herself!  How is it her fault?  She made it for the ex-boyfriend, and nobody else.  She has no reason to be upset that he saw it, because she gave it to him.  She has every right to be angry that he showed it to other people… AGAINST HER WILL.

I realize you think Carrie Prejean sucks as a person, so you probably enjoy the fact that she is now being publicly hurt by this affair.  I think everyone here agrees that her views on same-sex marriage are absolutely deplorable, and she deserves every bit of criticism, mockery, and scorn she gets for spreading those views.  That still doesn’t mean she deserves to be the victim of a misogynist prick’s efforts to make money on publicly shaming her for being a sexual being.

You are blaming the victim, and justifying it because the victim isn’t a very likeable person.  Please fucking stop, because you sound exactly like a fucking rapist fratboy douchebag when you continue trying to blame Prejean for her prick ex-boyfriend’s actions.

On one hand, you say this is a cultural issue only to claim it should constitute sexual assault (which is a legal concept).

No, I’m not.  I think sexual assault is a cultural concept.  I think that people, for instance, think rape is wrong even when it’s not prosecuted.  The legal issues aren’t what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the importance of people understanding the psychology of this issue, and acting accordingly. 

It’s easy for people to stick to legal issues, where they (wrongly) believe there are clear, bright lines.  Indeed, many posts about rape devolve into men demanding that feminist writers explain how much they can coerce before it’s rape, as if feminist bloggers are the arbitrators of not only the law but of what a jury will decide.

But I’m more interested in the nuanced, cultural discussion, and what gets shunned and what gets applauded in our culture.

chingona @#6:

I understand why what happens on school grounds and at school activities is their business, and they can and probably should set standards that are stricter than the law in general. But when on earth did they become the policemen of the world?

The school was threatening them with being kicked out of sports. Often, students who do sports have agree to abide by certain standards of behavior 24/7 (no drugs or alcohol, no smoking, whatever) to stay on the team. (The same goes in theory for other extracurricular activities, although it’s probably not an issue as often with, say, the Chess Club.)

You can argue whether 1) this is appropriate and 2) whether, even if it is, the actions of the girls here warranted such a penalty. (My answers, if anyone cares, are “maybe” and “no.") The point is, it’s legally and materially different to throw someone off a sports team than to discipline or expel them from school entirely.

You know what makes a thread like this so unbelievably frustrating?

The inability of some to see the nuance of other human beings.  Saying that Carrie Prejean was the victim of sexual assault (as a cultural, not legal construct) DOES NOT EQUATE to forgiving Carrie Prejean for her assholish promotion of homobigotry.

But some can’t seem to see that fundamental point.

It’s a BOTH/AND blog.  Carrie Prejean is BOTH an asshole for being a homobigot AND a victim because her prick ex-boyfriend decided to slut-shame her.

DTG @ 89:

You keep framing the argument as, “Well since Prejean was so stupid as to make a nude video of herself, she’s got no reason to be angry when the person she gave it to distributed it to others.” Even though it was clearly distributed AGAINST HER WILL.

Then Prejean should have kept the video under wraps. 

Is her ex-bf a jerk for making the video public, and/or taking any money for it? Yes. Has Prejean got a right to be angry with this situation? Probably. But she let the original cat out of the bag, not her ex.

I realize you think Carrie Prejean sucks as a person, so you probably enjoy the fact that she is now being publicly hurt by this affair.  I think everyone here agrees that her views on same-sex marriage are absolutely deplorable, and she deserves every bit of criticism, mockery, and scorn she gets for spreading those views.

I think Prejean’s opinion on same-sex marriage is just that: her opinion. And that she needn’t be damned for it outright despite my disagreement with said stance.

My issue with Prejean is her openly playing the marytr when she is not one at all, and the reason she was fired by Trump was her failure to live up to contracted responsibilities, not (as her enablers on Fox News claim) her stance on SSM despite what Prejean claims as she tearfully lashes herself to a cross.

Prejean is not a bad person, IMO, but she plays the frail flower poorly.

You are blaming the victim, and justifying it because the victim isn’t a very likeable person.  Please fucking stop, because you sound exactly like a fucking rapist fratboy douchebag when you continue trying to blame Prejean for her prick ex-boyfriend’s actions.

No, I’m expecting someone to take responsibility for their own sex lives if it gets into the open. Misogyny or a hatred of women has nothing to do with it.

If a video of Marc Sanford doing his mistress in Argentina (a video he knowingly participated in, and forwarded out) leaked to the web, would he not be responsible for any conduct depicted therein, plus any public fallout from it? Or would Sanford be a victim because the video was released AGAINST HIS WILL?

Or what about when Gary Hart flew to Bimini in 1983 to fool around with Donna Rice? When the Miami Herald bought the photo of them canoodling pierside (a photo Hart knew was being taken, and apparently has no problem with it as he and Rice are both smiling) and was printed AGAINST HIS WILL who was to blame for the shot existing at all? Hart or the Miami Herald?

Yet is Prejean a public figure like Hart or Sanford? Not an elected one, no. But that she participated in the pageant circuit makes her a public figure on some level, albeit one with less exposure (prior to her wailing about losing Miss USA by an eyelash).

Prejean was neither raped, nor slipped a mickey and gang-banged half-conscious by a pack of drunken goons. She taped herself masturbating at age 20 (we assume) and sent it to her bf online, which is not illegal nor immoral. But she has to live with the consequences of her actions, even if her ex is a jerk for re-posting the video in question AGAINST HER WILL.

I say again: you made your bed, now lie in it. Gender be damned.

Mark Foley had his privacy violated when those IMs were revealed, which had to have been against his will.  Somehow I don’t feel bad about that, though, or see him as a victim.* I’m much more capable of seeing Prejean as having been wronged than seeing Foley as having been wronged.  And I’m trying to figure out why…

* @ CHV, I do remember people online, maybe even here, feeling squicked out by the way Sanford’s love-letters were revealed and spoofed by people like Olbermann.  I don’t think I was one of them, but it wasn’t totally uncommon.

Honest to God I can’t believe some of these comments.  You’d think that, underneath all the noise, there was something inherently bad about these photos and videos, and that somebody - Carrie Prejean who made them, the person who distributed them, somebody - needs to be blamed for something.

Fuck you CHV, you victim-blaming douchebag.

You treat the situation as if the ex-boyfriend doesn’t bear ultimate responsibility for HIS action of spreading the private sex video of Prejean around, and that it’s her fault that HE showed the video to others.

When someone gives you an intimate and private sex video with the reasonable expectation that you WILL NOT SHARE IT WITH OTHER PEOPLE, you have no moral or ethical right to go showing it to other people.

Giving your BF a sex video does not equate to “letting the cat out of the bag”, anymore than having sex with a co-worker gives them the right to go bragging about it and describing it in vivid detail on the company website.  Giving a boyfriend a sex tape of yourself does not mean that you have forfeited your right to expect that tape to remain private!

The consequence of her actions is that her boyfriend has a nude video of her, that she intended for only him to view.  The consequence of his actions is that lots of other people have been shown the video, against her wishes.

His actions, asshole, his actions.

It’s the same goddamn thing as saying, “Well, if she didn’t want to get raped, she shouldn’t have taken the job of working as a stripper and behaving like such a fuckable Slutty McSlutterson!”

The fact that you so easily dismiss the misogynist reality that women virtually always suffer more social consequences than men when these videos get leaked shows me just how fucking clueless you are.  When female celebrities have sex tapes leaked, the world says, “I always knew she was a slut!” When male celebrities have sex tapes leaked, the world says, “Wow, I never knew Screech from Saved by the Bell was such a stud muffin!” And people like you help sustain that shitty attitude.

I really hope you never reproduce, because you’ll make a really, really shitty father.

You really suck, and I’m done with you.  Go jerk off to some goat porn, creep.

Amanda wrote:

Indeed, many posts about rape devolve into men demanding that feminist writers explain how much they can coerce before it’s rape, as if feminist bloggers are the arbitrators of not only the law but of what a jury will decide.

Also as if that information would be somehow useful to them. I mean what, is the idea to set a clear line so you can tiptoe right up to it?

Shorter CHV:

Bitch was askin’ for it.

Seriously, CHV, there’s no other way for me to summarize this:

Prejean was neither raped, nor slipped a mickey and gang-banged half-conscious by a pack of drunken goons. She taped herself masturbating at age 20 (we assume) and sent it to her bf online, which is not illegal nor immoral. But she has to live with the consequences of her actions, even if her ex is a jerk for re-posting the video in question AGAINST HER WILL.

Well, sure, and a lot of women have started making out with guys who turned out to be unwilling to stop at just making out. These women went on the dates. They kissed they boys. They might even have taken their shirts off at some point. They weren’t drunk. They weren’t slipped a mickey. They weren’t half-conscious. They were more than happy to consent to doing some things with their dates.

And then their dates did something to them more than they consented to. Something AGAINST THEIR WILL.

Well, those girls were making out; they made their bed, lie in it, right?

Look, Prejean does, I’m sure, regret that she sent these tapes to this scumbag, just as women who’ve been date-raped regret going on the date where they got raped. That does not, however, make it justified to blame the rape on the victim, and it doesn’t make it okay to celebrate the release of these tapes.

Now, you, CHV, seem to want to blame Prejean so much that you have decided that it’s okay to blame the victim. Fine. But don’t pretend you’re not doing that. Don’t pretend you’re not reveling in the violation of her privacy by someone she trusted. Don’t pretend you’re not celebrating the distribution of her private and intimate communications against her will.

And don’t pretend that you’re not providing support for rape culture. In the post I wrote that Amanda was kind enough to link to, I said what she said—that sexual assault is worse than distributing pictures of someone without their permission. But it’s on the same continuum. To my mind, it’s at about the level of moral depravity as copping a feel on a subway—not rape, but certainly rape-y. And by defending it, we’re essentially saying that it’s okay to slut-shame a woman, if we disagree with her politics. Well, you’re free to believe that. But I’ll be damned if I do.

@95: W. Kiernan --

The outing of Foley was less morally problematic because he was sending IMs to under-aged pages who he had a level of authority over. They were an outing of his own unethical and possibly criminal behavior. That is different. I’ll grant you, the case is morally complex, but it’s less ambiguous than this one.

(Incidentally, the case I remain troubled by is the Larry Craig case, which I still feel criminalizes free speech—as a random gay guy asking me for sex, even when I’m using a men’s lavatory, is not particularly traumatic, and easily dealt with by my answering based on my willingness to have sex with a random gay guy.)

(Incidentally, the case I remain troubled by is the Larry Craig case, which I still feel criminalizes free speech—as a random gay guy asking me for sex, even when I’m using a men’s lavatory, is not particularly traumatic, and easily dealt with by my answering based on my willingness to have sex with a random gay guy.)

It’s the law that’s the problem, though I think there is a legitimate state interest in restricting sexual activity in a public place--not so much the asking as the performance, mind you. A person ought to have to do a little more than make a hand gesture or even vocalize a come-on to get arrested for public indecency.

If a video of Marc Sanford doing his mistress in Argentina (a video he knowingly participated in, and forwarded out) leaked to the web, would he not be responsible for any conduct depicted therein, plus any public fallout from it? Or would Sanford be a victim because the video was released AGAINST HIS WILL?

You need to be a little more clear.  Are we talking about a video that Sanford e-mailed to his 30 best buddies, or a video that he thought was private between himself and his girlfriend that (say) her soon-to-be-ex-husband discovered and sent to the media?  If it was the first case, it would be hard to argue that Sanford had a reasonable expectation of privacy after sending it to a large list of people.  If it was the second case then, yes, Mark Sanford would have been a victim because something that he had reasonably expected would remain a private matter between himself and his girlfriend was released to the media by someone with an agenda.

Or what about when Gary Hart flew to Bimini in 1983 to fool around with Donna Rice? When the Miami Herald bought the photo of them canoodling pierside (a photo Hart knew was being taken, and apparently has no problem with it as he and Rice are both smiling) and was printed AGAINST HIS WILL who was to blame for the shot existing at all? Hart or the Miami Herald?

Funny, I don’t remember that being a picture of Hart with his dick out fucking a nude Donna Rice on the deck of the boat.  I just remember a goofy picture of her sitting on his lap that could easily have been explained away had Hart bothered to do so because it wasn’t particularly incriminating.  One of us seems to be misremembering exactly what was in the picture and therefore what the level of the invasion of privacy was.

It’s the law that’s the problem, though I think there is a legitimate state interest in restricting sexual activity in a public place--not so much the asking as the performance, mind you. A person ought to have to do a little more than make a hand gesture or even vocalize a come-on to get arrested for public indecency.

Public sex acts should be illegal.  I wouldn’t be too comfortable taking a leak in a public restroom while two people, regardless of their genders and orientations, were getting freaky in a stall near me.  If people want to condone public sex acts in a closed community (in which children aren’t present), I got no problem with that, provided everyone in the community is fully informed that they may be publicly exposed to people having sex at any time.

As for the Craig situation, while I do think it served the purpose of revealing his hypocrisy, I think the legal procedure involved to arrest him was bullshit.  Sending cops out on sting operations to actively try to lure men into homosexual acts in public restrooms is entrapment, and simply making a hand gesture implying willingness to engage in such an act shouldn’t be enough to get someone arrested.  If a cop walks into a restroom and two people are having sex in a stall, he should be able to make an arrest.  He should not be actively trying to coerce people into engaging in the illegal behavior just so that he can get an arrest.

It’s the same thing as a traffic cop in an unmarked car who tailgates you on the highway, forcing you to have to speed up to keep a safe distance, and then pulling you over and giving you a speeding ticket when he actively tried to get you to exceed the speed limit just so he could pull you over.  Yeah, that happened to me a few months ago.  Still pissed about that.

You’d think that, underneath all the noise, there was something inherently bad about these photos and videos, and that somebody - Carrie Prejean who made them, the person who distributed them, somebody - needs to be blamed for something.

In many states, it’s perfectly legal to make “up-skirt” videos of unsuspecting women and then and post the video on the internet because the women are in a public place and apparently women should always expect to have someone stick a video camera under their skirt if they go to the mall or ride the bus.

To me, this is pretty much the moral equivalent of an up-skirt video.  She made the video for one person and never expected it to be released to the general public.  If you have absolutely no idea why someone might find it embarrassing to have a video or photo they made solely for their lover’s enjoyment released to the general public, I think the subject becomes your lack of empathy and why you don’t understand why someone might prefer not to have nude pictures of themselves released to the general public without their consent.

Jeff @ 99:

Bitch was askin’ for it.

Oh, Christ…

Let me summarize, and I’ll use small words so you’ll understand: rape or sex obtained under duress is not only morally wrong, but illegal. And those responsible for such acts (the rapist) should be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

Now, you, CHV, seem to want to blame Prejean so much that you have decided that it’s okay to blame the victim. Fine. But don’t pretend you’re not doing that....And don’t pretend that you’re not providing support for rape culture.

Victim? Victim of what?

People are talking here like Prejean was metaphorically raped via her sex tape (which I have not seen or heard audio from; I don’t care to) getting leaked, when at best she suffered from a violation of trust (from the ex-bf). Thus, any comparisons to rape (be it real or metaphorical) and/or rape culture in this matter (much less victimhood) are fucking absurd.

Mnemosyne @ 101:

Funny, I don’t remember that being a picture of Hart with his dick out fucking a nude Donna Rice on the deck of the boat.

No, but Hart was screwing around with a woman who was not his wife and got caught. He admitted it, and dropped out of the ‘84 presidential race a few days later. Look it up.

No, but Hart was screwing around with a woman who was not his wife and got caught.

And that’s exactly the same as releasing a videotape of Carrie Prejean masturbating for the camera ... how, again?  You seem a little confused about the difference between knowing a fact (Hart was cheating on his wife with Rice) and publicly releasing a videotape or photographs of Hart naked in bed fucking Rice.

People are talking here like Prejean was metaphorically raped via her sex tape (which I have not seen or heard audio from; I don’t care to) getting leaked, when at best she suffered from a violation of trust (from the ex-bf). Thus, any comparisons to rape (be it real or metaphorical) and/or rape culture in this matter (much less victimhood) are fucking absurd.

People are talking here like that some hypothetical 15-year-old victim of statutory rape was really raped, when at best she suffered a violation of trust (from the 53-year-old teacher). Thus, any comparisons to rape (be it real or metaphorical) and/or rape culture in this matter (much less victimhood) are fucking absurd.

CHV, Carrie Prejean’s masturbation habits are being discussed on prime-time television. If you don’t see any harm in that, then you’re simply not dealing with the reality the rest of us are.

Jeff Fecke:  The outing of Foley was less morally problematic because he was sending IMs to under-aged pages who he had a level of authority over. They were an outing of his own unethical and possibly criminal behavior. That is different. I’ll grant you, the case is morally complex, but it’s less ambiguous than this one.

Right, but that also shows that the line isn’t really drawn around violation of privacy against one’s will, because if the private act is sufficiently dodgy or even criminal that seems to trump or void the protection normally accorded to private acts.  But even that isn’t going to hold up, because there are stupid laws against sodomy and such that I think we’d all agree deserve the protection of privacy even if they’re nominally “criminal.” Something’s tricky about how to go about connecting the underlying act to the presumption that it should be shielded by privacy, and then connecting both of those to the damage done by violating that privacy.

“DTG @ 89:

“You keep framing the argument as, “Well since Prejean was so stupid as to make a nude video of herself, she’s got no reason to be angry when the person she gave it to distributed it to others.” Even though it was clearly distributed AGAINST HER WILL.”

Then Prejean should have kept the video under wraps.”

(really, seriously? you are going to go with that pun?)

And clearly, I should have kept my bathroom window closed when I went to go take a shower.  Nevermind that the asshole who repeatedly violated my privacy would deliberately crack the window open enough for him to peek in, but not so much that you’d notice unless you were actually checking the window each time.  Which I learned to do.

The arguments against treating the public distribution of images that were meant for private consumption as assault remind me a lot of the arguments/cultural narrative regarding how it’s not really a big deal when someone is a “peeping tom.” And they are all absolute crap.  There is a reason why the latter is illegal, even if culturally it’s treated as a tame joke.

The problem with addressing peeping toms is that the violation itself is a private one.  Even when the person whose privacy is being violated knows about it, addressing it means making a violation of privacy public.  Combined with the usual problems with addressing sexual assault and harassment, that means that it’s a problem that’s difficult to combat.

For better or worse, the assholes that “share” private images with others have (for the most part) already made the violation public knowledge.  Which gives me hope that this issue will finally be addressed both culturally and legally.  They aren’t really giving their victims much choice except to deal with them head on.

“People are talking here like Prejean was metaphorically raped via her sex tape (which I have not seen or heard audio from; I don’t care to) getting leaked, when at best she suffered from a violation of trust (from the ex-bf).”

Guess what dudebro that apparently has never had someone they trusted (or not) do something like this to them, shit like this feels a hell lot more like physical sexual assault than you think it does.  At least it did for me, and while I’ve never been raped (thank god), I have been groped and sexually assaulted in other ways.  And based on my experience, you’re assumption that physical violence is always worse or more violent is complete crap.

Because the issue is not just a matter of broken trust between private citizens, it’s a matter of one person making another no longer feel safe and whole.  Crap like this isn’t just sad-making, it (often) makes the victim feel under seige, unsafe, violated, and subhuman.  Which is often the fucking point.  And even when it’s not, the justifications for why it’s ok/legal to do this are right in line with the justifications for more serious assaults.  Which would by why serial rapists often start out doing crap like this, much like how serial killers start out by torturing animals.

The fact that I get undressed in the same house as you does not give you the right to “peek” at me when I do.  The fact that I let you look at me naked does not give your friend the right to do so as well.  Likewise for photographs.  And while it may not be practical to prosecute everyone who shares photos of his ex with his friends, it is most definitely in the public’s best interest to make sure that it’s illegal to make private sexual images significantly public without explicit permission.

‘Sexual Assault’ is a legal term.  FindLaw gives a broad yet useful overview of what is generally meant by the term:

Specific laws vary by state, but sexual assault generally refers to any crime in which the offender subjects the victim to sexual touching that is unwanted and offensive. These crimes can range from sexual groping or assault/battery, to attempted rape. and there are certain elements of that must be met for an act to be counted as sexual assault.

Publishing a video does not fall within this very broad definition.

Also, I’m a blogger, not a lawyer. It should be understood that I’m not writing the law, but talking about cultural understanding of right and wrong. 

And Glen Beck is a “rodeo clown,” and Rush Limbaugh is “merely an entertainer.” This is way too close to the “I’m only joking” excuse given by conservatives when they say something offensive and try to weasel* out of it.  If you are going to use legal terms, please use them responsibly and in an informed manner.

As for the substantive issue of publishing sex videos without permission - I’m torn.  On the one hand, I like the idea of an iron clad legal rule that any letters, texts, emails, photos, videos, what have you that someone sends to you should be fair game for the recipient to publish for legal.  Fullstop.  Nuances be damned.  You send it to someone, then you might as well post in on your blog.  This is particularly true if you are using said material to point out the hypocrisy or challenge the credibility of someone.  For example, a sex tape or text admitting to sex with someone other than their spouse by a staunch family values Republican should be fair game.  Sorry, if you’re anti-gay or anti-sex and a partner drops the dime on you then I’ve got no sympathy for you’re privacy - you know, they very thing that you want to invade when it comes to everyone else.

On the other hand, I’ve seen enough garbage where someone has taken a nude photo or sex tape of an ex an publicized it to intimidate/shame/embarrass/emotionally injure their ex.  I think this sort of thing is morally wrong, and will probably leave you open (and rightly so) to a civil suit in many jurisdictions.  But treating publication of a video as an “assault” or some other sort of crime?  Nah, that’s going to far.

* No offense to actual weasels.

I absolutely consider texting dirty stuff to someone else to be a form of having sex with them

You completely lost me there.

Just because a term has a legal definition doesn’t mean that it doesn’t also have a cultural or plain-English definition as well.  It can be two things!  You can say “the death penalty is murder” and have it mean something even if governors and executioners can’t be prosecuted for the criminal charge of murder.  Or you can escape incest charges in some states by marrying your cousin, but it doesn’t mean you can’t call it incest.

But treating publication of a video as an “assault” or some other sort of crime?  Nah, that’s going to far.

You mean that the fact that your male privilege means that you will never experience the same sense of violation at having your privacy invaded or have to deal with any of the social consequences of having pictures you didn’t want to have released made public means that you think that a woman having her privacy invaded is no big deal and we silly women are just making a big fuss over nothing?

Gee, there’s a shocker.

People are talking here like Prejean was metaphorically raped via her sex tape (which I have not seen or heard audio from; I don’t care to) getting leaked, when at best she suffered from a violation of trust (from the ex-bf). Thus, any comparisons to rape (be it real or metaphorical) and/or rape culture in this matter (much less victimhood) are fucking absurd.

If you understand rape and sexual assault only as a form of “theft of sex”, then I can see how you arrive at this conclusion.

But that’s not all that sexual assault is, as Amanda’s post (I thought) made abundantly clear. It’s not just “theft of sex”. It’s about creating a culture that puts women “in their place”, with the threat of rape held out as a “corrective measure.” “Don’t have too much fun or you’ll be raped.” “Don’t speak up too loudly or you’ll be raped.” “Don’t stand up to patriarchy - you wouldn’t want to be raped, would you?”

The patriarchy supports and defends rape - mostly by not calling it “rape” and by not calling the men who do it “rapists” - not just because it’s viewed as a convenient way to skirt female mate choice for the specific men involved - the rapists - but because a rape culture has the added and more general benefit of compelling female submission.

Which release of sex tapes also does. So it’s rightly viewed as a form of sexual assault, in my opinion. The problem, in my mind, is that production and release of sexual material can also be a form of sexual assault; Bill O’Reilly’s “loofah/falafel” sex messages were also intended only for the recipient, but they were sexual harassment. It seems unlikely that Prejean was attempting to sexually harass the guy in this case, but it’s possible, and if so surely he was under no obligation to keep a confidence that was being exploited against him.

But I’m pretty sure this guy is totally a tool. And Carrie Prejean pretty much is, as well. I’d rather save my sympathies for women who aren’t exploiting their sexual attractiveness for money and to use as a bully pulpit to oppress my friends and family. But, you know, I’m widely regarded as an asshole for that.

Yeah, it’s totally unsurprising how easy it is to tell who here has never had (and will in all probability never have) to face the risk of having their sexual and bodily privacy invaded for someone else’s sexual gratification or revenge.

You guys have learned to toe the “rape is bad mmmmkay” line (probably because you realized that people would throw rocks at you or something if you didn’t) but you’ve still failed to understand WHY rape is bad, obviously, because it’s the SAME REASON why nonconsensually exposing someone else’s sex tapes or nude photos is bad.

Chet gets it, even if he doesn’t extend the concept fully to Prejean.

Chet gets it, even if he doesn’t extend the concept fully to Prejean.

I just can’t see her as entirely the victim here, when there’s a strong possibility that she made those images as part of a campaign to stalk a guy. You know, and when her entire shtick is trading on her looks to grab a big microphone and trash gay people. If the images weren’t intended as harassment, then at the very least they were a calculated effort in self-promotion, not an intimacy between lovers. And I’m kind of forced to wonder why the patriarchy would be at such pains to keep her in line when she’s gone to such great lengths to quite visibly keep herself in line. Indeed, to tell us all how great the line is, and how women would all be so much happier if they would keep to it!

But, like I said, I’m widely regarded as an asshole. I’m against the practice of exploiting intimacies to hurt people. Prejean’s as guilty of that as her supposed ex-bf is.

there’s a strong possibility that she made those images as part of a campaign to stalk a guy.

then at the very least they were a calculated effort in self-promotion, not an intimacy between lovers

What are you getting these suppositions from? Is there specific information about the release which suggests them, or are you just making a guess based on her previous jerky behaviors?

Yeah, it’s totally unsurprising how easy it is to tell who here has never had (and will in all probability never have) to face the risk of having their sexual and bodily privacy invaded for someone else’s sexual gratification or revenge.

You guys have learned to toe the “rape is bad mmmmkay” line (probably because you realized that people would throw rocks at you or something if you didn’t) but you’ve still failed to understand WHY rape is bad, obviously, because it’s the SAME REASON why nonconsensually exposing someone else’s sex tapes or nude photos is bad.

I agree, it is a uniquely male perspective to dismiss this sort of stuff as less than it is, and to place the blame for the wide release of nude videos intended for one person on the woman who made or consented to the video in the first place.  And while I get why Prejean’s unrelated character faults make her a more difficult person to feel sympathy for, the issue is not about her homophobia.  Being an otherwise shitty person does not revoke a woman’s right to not be sexually traumatized by some prick trying to publicly humiliate and intimidate her.  Phyllis Schlafly and Sally Kern are two of the most disgustingly reprehensible female public figures I know in terms of women’s and LGBT rights.  And yet if either of these very dislikeable women was to ever be sexually victimized by any man for the purpose of publicly humiliating and intimidating them, my rage would be squarely directed at the man who violated them.

I think a lot of men who posted in this thread get it, so obviously there’s hope.  I can only speak for myself here, but I think part of the reason why I am able to sympathize with the pain of sexual trauma is because I am a sexual trauma survivor myself… though I am a straight white male, I was repeatedly sexually molested as a very young child by a male family member (no, not my father), and so I know very personally what the shame of being humiliated by a more powerful and once trusted male sexual aggressor feels like.

I grew up way too fucking quick, and it fucking sucks ass.  It has affected me throughout my entire life, and I will probably always have trust issues with overly aggressive men because of it.  I damn near had a nervous breakdown when the awful details of what happened to the two kidnapped St. Louis boys made national news a few years ago, and Bill O’Reilly suggested that Sean Hornbeck might have liked being raped over 100 times by that subhuman pedophile monster.  O’Reilly came to St. Louis shortly after that, and I thought about getting a ticket to his event just so I could jam my fist down his throat, I was so enraged by his disgustingly insensitive comment.  That dickface is a massive rape-enabling pile of shit.

Nobody is saying that the shame of having a private sex video exposed without consent is the direct equivalent to being physically raped, or that the trauma caused is necessarily as severe.  But there is trauma involved, and the perpetrator who shows others a private nude video of someone else without that person’s consent is usually doing it specifically for the purpose of sexually shaming the victim.

It makes me sick to my stomach how many creepy assholes seem to think this whole affair is much ado about nothing.  Cause it ain’t.  It almost makes me wish that every male who just writes this stuff off and blames the victim would get sexually humiliated themselves, so then maybe they’d learn a little sympathy.

I just can’t see her as entirely the victim here, when there’s a strong possibility that she made those images as part of a campaign to stalk a guy.

-----------

If the images weren’t intended as harassment, then at the very least they were a calculated effort in self-promotion, not an intimacy between lovers.

Who the fuck are you to make that assessment?  Were you there?  Do you know what the nature of the relationship was between her and the guy involved, above and beyond the fairly arbitrary speculation of the gossip media?  Since you don’t know and you weren’t there, maybe you should shut the fuck up, since you clearly don’t have a fucking clue what you are talking about.

when her entire shtick is trading on her looks to grab a big microphone and trash gay people.

Yup, that stupid bitch clearly deserved it, because she’s such an evil cunt.  Let’s all wish that all the stupid conservative bitches we hate get sexually humiliated in public.  Because that will put them in their place.

But, like I said, I’m widely regarded as an asshole.

Probably because you are one.  Prick.

Sorry, I get very emotional and worked up when patronizing men start defining what should or shouldn’t be considered sexual predatory behavior designed to humiliate and harm a less powerful victim, when they don’t have the first fucking clue what it feels like to be sexually harmed by a more powerful aggressor.

With all due respect, you have no fucking clue what you are talking about.  You ain’t been there, so your opinion means jack shit.

Hypocrisy is a peccadillo compared to releasing sexual photos to humiliate and degrade someone.  I’m surprised people are trying to justify the photos because she is a hypocrite and had it coming.  Besides, it is really distracting because Carrie Prejean’s sexual escapades have nothing to do with her arguments.  Her arguments should be rejected because they lack any substance not because of the kind of person she is.

What are you getting these suppositions from?

You mean, why am I assuming that a self-promoter did something self-promoting?

Who the fuck are you to make that assessment?

A loudmouth asshole on the internet, just like you, is who. Look, she’s a human being. She gets the bare minimum of respect from me for that. That respect does not extend so far as the benefit of the doubt in all her endeavors, especially after the pattern of behavior she’s established.

She’s entitled, manipulative, blinkered, and self-absorbed. Gosh, why would I suspect that extends to other areas of her life, or that as a person she’s probably never been acquainted with true intimacy - especially with someone she apparently mostly knew online.

Sorry, I get very emotional and worked up when patronizing men start defining what should or shouldn’t be considered sexual predatory behavior designed to humiliate and harm a less powerful victim

Wait, “less powerful”? You really think Carrie Prejean, household name and conservative darling - the female Joe the Plumber - is less powerful than the no-name sleaze for whom TMZ was the extent of his media connections? She’s a very powerful person.

Yup, that stupid bitch clearly deserved it, because she’s such an evil cunt.

I don’t think she’s a “cunt”, and I would never use such language to refer to a woman - and I don’t think you should, either. Digs at her gender aren’t appropriate. (Please do the the courtesy of not putting them in my mouth.)

If she genuinely created those images as a tender intimacy between lovers, then yes, she’s the victim of a sexual assault. There’s less than a half-chance that’s what actually happened, because nothing about her is genuine. It’s far more likely that those images were created for manipulative purpose - that they constitute as much as the use of a weapon on her part as releasing them was on his.

Bill O’Reilly’s sexual messages were embarrassing to him, and clearly the release of that content - I don’t know that the recordings themselves were ever released - was intended to put him in his place, to exert power over him. I mean they came out in a legal settlement about his sexual harassment.

The reason that doesn’t make him a victim is that those messages weren’t in good faith, they weren’t intended to express genuine affection between intimates. The purpose was for Bill-O to inflict his will on a woman. Similarly, I don’t believe that Prejean’s images were sent in good faith; it seems pretty obvious to me that most likely they were part of her cynical pattern of self-promotion and manipulation. She’s certainly exploiting their release now.

I’m not justifying the release of any photos. I’m justifying why I just don’t give a shit, and why I think a much better example of “release of sex pictures as sexual assault” could be chosen. It’s a good point - a great one - it’s just an incredibly bad example.

Not the time, Chet. Not the time time.

Arguments as to whether releasing these pictures constitute sexual assault aside, if there were evidence that someone was hypocritical, how could that hypocrisy be established as fact without giving evidence?

If I say I have proof that someone isn’t the paragon of Christian virtue they make out but I say ‘I can’t show you the evidence because that would be an abuse of that person’s privacy’, then there would be no way to tell that from all the countless unwarranted accusations thrown at people all the time.

How would you back up your assertions? It’s not as if Carrie Prejean has done anything illegal where evidence could be shown to a jury rather than making it public.

By becoming a figurehead for right-wing Christian bigots and helping push their anti-gay agenda she is no longer a strictly private citizen.
It certainly is a morally murky situation.

You mean, why am I assuming that a self-promoter did something self-promoting?

That was why I asked whether you had any specific evidence from the way this story unfolded, or whether you were just guessing based on her previous behaviors.

I will assume it’s the latter.

In which case, you’re right: you’re an asshole.

<QUOTE>If she genuinely created those images as a tender intimacy between lovers, then yes, she’s the victim of a sexual assault. There’s less than a half-chance that’s what actually happened, because nothing about her is genuine. It’s far more likely that those images were created for manipulative purpose - that they constitute as much as the use of a weapon on her part as releasing them was on his. </QUOTE>

It didn’t have to be tender.  I have seen this being argued by conservatives - oh he was her bf and she thought she was in love with him.  I haven’t read all of the details, but my impression is that she thought no such thing.  And she didn’t have to.  That’s important.  It didn’t have to be love, it didn’t have to be tender, and he didn’t have to be her bf.  I hate this because I feel that it’s a version of the madonna/whore and we all know only one of those can be raped.  Who cares why she did it?  What if she just did it to get off?  So?

That’s one issue.  The other issue is harder.  I have to admit it made it more difficult for me after reading Digby’s post entitled Maggie May I yesterday.  Apparently Prejean mocked and belittled a very low-level staffer on King’s show.  It was pretty bad.

So, she’s an asshole.  I mean, there is no way around that.  She’s not just ignorant, and she’s not just young, she is a total, outright, mean asshole. 

And so KO feels justified in making sexually degrading remarks and constantly showing titilating pictures of her.  And you feel the guy who had the pics was justified because you have decided that a woman like that (I can hear the words) took the pictures for reasons you don’t approve of.

And I really, really, don’t like her.  She’s an asshole.

And that’s all besides the point.  When one human being becomes sexually involved on any level, and I include Amanda’s examples of sexually explicit emails or texts here, to show anything one has received whether they be explicit letters, or videos or pictures, is like inviting your buddies in to watch your lover while they are asleep naked.  It is wrong, always.  It is abusive, always.  It makes you a sexual exploiter, always.  It makes you a sexual abuser, always.

And that’s all besides the point.  When one human being becomes sexually involved on any level, and I include Amanda’s examples of sexually explicit emails or texts here, to show anything one has received whether they be explicit letters, or videos or pictures, is like inviting your buddies in to watch your lover while they are asleep naked.  It is wrong, always.  It is abusive, always.  It makes you a sexual exploiter, always.  It makes you a sexual abuser, always.

This, precisely. Ultimately, if we decide that we’re not going to fight for people we don’t like, we make things worse for those we do. I don’t like Carrie Prejean, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to assault her, to violate her, or to otherwise harm her. Point out that she’s wrong. Point out that she’s an idiot. Point out that she’s a hypocrite (which, incidentally, can be done without resorting to “she made a sex tape, and here it is"). Point out that she’s a jerk and that she can dish it out, but can’t take it.

Don’t, however, support those who violate her privacy and release intimate photos of her that she never wanted released. Because the actions you support now, when it’s a woman you hate, will be used later against women you love.

“Sending cops out on sting operations to actively try to lure men into homosexual acts in public restrooms is entrapment, and simply making a hand gesture implying willingness to engage in such an act shouldn’t be enough to get someone arrested.  If a cop walks into a restroom and two people are having sex in a stall, he should be able to make an arrest.  He should not be actively trying to coerce people into engaging in the illegal behavior just so that he can get an arrest.”

In what way did the cop “actively try to lure” or “try to coerce“ Craig?
Its been a while, so maybe I don’t remember right, but I seem to be under the impression that it was analogous to the cops setting up a fake fencing operation and just waiting for people to bring stolen goods to them

Jeff @ 106:

Carrie Prejean’s masturbation habits are being discussed on prime-time television. If you don’t see any harm in that, then you’re simply not dealing with the reality the rest of us are.

The media often knows no scruples or ethics, this is true. And I agree that Prejean is no doubt mortified by the attention she’s getting from public chatter over the video in question. 

As such, I wonder if Prejean is in any legal position to sue her ex for the disclosure of said footage?

People are talking here like that some hypothetical 15-year-old victim of statutory rape was really raped, when at best she suffered a violation of trust (from the 53-year-old teacher). Thus, any comparisons to rape (be it real or metaphorical) and/or rape culture in this matter (much less victimhood) are fucking absurd.

Again, apples and oranges.

If a 15 year-old has sex with a much older teacher, that is a physical (and illegal) event that can proven with forensic evidence; what’s going on with Prejean (e.g. the video) is not sexual assault because it involved no direct contact. Thus, once again, comparisons to rape or “rape culture” in this scenario do not apply.

A rape (defined as forced or unconsentual sex) either occurs in real time or it doesn’t. There is no gray area.

For some reason, hypocrisy has been determined to be the greatest offense in mainstream culture.  Oh noes, Al Gore uses an air conditioner, everything he says must be a lie!  Etc.  Largely, Carrie Prejean is wrong because she’s wrong, not because she’s a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do type.  Her credibility as a paragon of Christian virtue was destroyed by the very fact of competing in a beauty pageant anyway.  In any case, she doesn’t deserve sexual humiliation any more than Ann Coulter deserves to be hatefucked or whatever Playboy tried to argue for.  It’s like why it’s important that Khalid Sheik Mohammed get a civil trial:  you have basic human rights that are inalienable, and aren’t vacated depending on what degree of asshole you are.

Shorter Chet:

“Of course women have the right to not be violated by others who want to expose private nude videos of them.  Except if they are dislikeable rightwing women, in which case it’s OK.  No, I am not a misogynist… it’s just the stupid wingnut bitches that I hate and don’t believe have rights.”

Amanda Marcotte said:

I hope we can be nuanced enough about this to see that Prejean is both a victim and a horrible hypocrite.

Unfortunately, several people have shown the utter inability to do that.

Mnemosyne: In many states, it’s perfectly legal to make “up-skirt” videos of unsuspecting women and then and post the video on the internet... I can’t understand why you brought that up, as Carrie Prejean made the videos and photos herself. 

I think the subject becomes your lack of empathy and why you don’t understand why someone might prefer not to have nude pictures of themselves released to the general public without their consent.

What I don’t understand is a.) why anyone in his right mind would censure Carrie Prejean for being naked, or masturbating, or take pictures of herself doing it, and b.) why people think that something comparable to rape happened to her when her ex-boyfriend published this stuff. 

Regarding a.), scan the comments above for the word “blame,” or Google “prejean tapes.” I keep reading things like “she shouldn’t have made those tapes,” and I want to reply “Why the Hell not? Is there something wrong with them?  Are you nuts?”

Regarding b.), in my opinion it is in bad taste to kiss-and-tell, and I can understand why someone might be somewhat upset over the violation of their presumption of confidentiality.  But there is this vast gulf between actual rape, which actually hurts its victim, and kiss-and-tell where the victim has to pump up artificial indignation to claim she’s suffered at all.  It is disrespectful to actual rape victims to compare their experience with this trivial, inconsequential nonsense.  “Ouch, I stubbed my toe!  It’s just like the Holocaust!!!”

But there is this vast gulf between actual rape, which actually hurts its victim, and kiss-and-tell where the victim has to pump up artificial indignation to claim she’s suffered at all.

a.) You really don’t think that there people are actually hurt when their exes maliciously release videos like these?  That it’s really just artificial indignation and she should what, get over it?

b.) You don’t see the difference between kissing and telling and actually releasing pictures and videos in terms of humiliation and invasion?

c.)You don’t see how allowing/condoning/minimizing this behavior encourages rape?

It’s like why it’s important that Khalid Sheik Mohammed get a civil trial:  you have basic human rights that are inalienable, and aren’t vacated depending on what degree of asshole you are.

Even though it is a completely different issue, the logic employed by wingnuts who think KSM doesn’t deserve basic human rights is essentially the same - he’s a really, really bad person who did really awful things, so he doesn’t deserve basic human rights.

Watching wingnuts freak out over the fact that KSM is going to be tried in federal court in New York (and will almost assuredly be found guilty and sentenced to death) is amazing, and incredibly depressing.  It’s as if spending the rest of his life in prison waiting to die by lethal injection is going to be way too humane a punishment for him in their eyes - he should have his fingers and toes cut off one by one first.

It’s the same logic here - Carrie Prejean is a demonstrably bad person, so she doesn’t deserve the same right to not have her body violated in this way as other women.

You mean that the fact that your male privilege means that you will never experience the same sense of violation at having your privacy invaded or have to deal with any of the social consequences of having pictures you didn’t want to have released made public means that you think that a woman having her privacy invaded is no big deal and we silly women are just making a big fuss over nothing? 

Except I never said it was no big deal did I?  Try actually reading what I write if you are going to respond. 

Male privilege not withstanding, I most certainly would NOT want pictures of me engaging in sex made public.  I would feel it was a violation of my privacy and trust if I sent such a video to someone and they published it.  But I do not think it should be a crime.  Do you think jail time is warranted here?  Not all awful and immoral behavior should be criminalized.  How about we quit using the criminal justice system to address every single problem in the US?

As I said, I do think civil remedies are appropriate.  Publishing a video to shame or torment someone would be intentional infliction of emotional distress at the very least.  But outing a hypocritical public figure?  I call that protected political speech.

Male privilege not withstanding, I most certainly would NOT want pictures of me engaging in sex made public.  I would feel it was a violation of my privacy and trust if I sent such a video to someone and they published it.  But I do not think it should be a crime.  Do you think jail time is warranted here?  Not all awful and immoral behavior should be criminalized.  How about we quit using the criminal justice system to address every single problem in the US?

Amanda stated, both in her original blog entry and in several reiterations in the comments, that the discussion here is NOT about whether or not this behavior should be criminalized, but whether or not perpetrators of this behavior should rightly be seen as bottom-feeding scumbags, the type of people who use that same sort of logic used by others to excuse rape.

It’s a conversation about what the cultural response to this behavior should be, not how the criminal justice system should (or should not) deal with it.

It’s remarkable how often people use “This problem doesn’t have a legislative solution” to mean “therefore, it’s not something that should be talked about a being wrong.”

Billingham: a.) You really don’t think that there people are actually hurt when their exes maliciously release videos like these?  That it’s really just artificial indignation and she should what, get over it?

Hurt, yeah, stubbed-my-toe hurt, like everybody who’s ever been through a embarrassing, nasty break-up is hurt.  Hurt like a rape victim is hurt?  No.

Regarding “artificial indignation,” on the national news, Carrie Prejean said that making these wholesome, innocent pix and vids was “the biggest mistake of my life.” Do you take that statement at face value?  I can’t; either she has a concept of what’s right and wrong that I can’t grasp at all or she’s lying outright.

c.) You don’t see how allowing/condoning/minimizing this behavior encourages rape?

No I do not.  To be specific, if you could, by some science-fictional contrivance, make an exact duplicate of our planet and all the people on it, and you went to that duplicate planet and enforced complete prohibition of the republication of ex-lovers’s sexy vids and pix, where the government immediately censored any such material the instant it surfaced on their Internet, I believe that not even one more forcible rape would occur on the uncensored planet than on the censored one.

Not all awful and immoral behavior should be criminalized.  How about we quit using the criminal justice system to address every single problem in the US?

Unless I am missing something, social censure and reframing of how one deals with this issue so it is treated much more seriously than it has been and actual criminalization of said behavior are two separate things.

My impression of the post is that Amanda is arguing the former...not the latter though some commenters have argued in favor of both. 

As for actual legal remedies...civil suits for inflicting of emotional distress/violation of privacy may be the only recourse the victim has from my limited knowledge of the law. 

But outing a hypocritical public figure?  I call that protected political speech.

Umm...I’d be far more receptive to that argument if we’re talking about individuals who are politicians or who have actual direct and substantial influence over the formulation of public policy/laws.  I’m not sure if Carrie Prejean qualifies in that regard as her claim to fame is mainly from participation in a privately run beauty pageant. 

Moreover, this argument is troubling as one can potentially become a “public figure” under the law without any voluntary actions on the part of the individual concerned as the case of Richard Jewell who was wrongfully accused of instigating the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombings. 

One of the first defenses used by many news publications in the aftermath was that since he is not a “public figure”....he had a higher burden of proof to argue his libel and defamation cases against various newsmedia who printed such false and misleading stories.  Personally, I find this to be complete BS because he became one precisely because of the unrelenting and later found to be false/misleading news coverage. 

As for calling it protected political speech....if that were the case...this may deprive Carrie Prejean and victims like her of even civil remedies under the law as any attempt to do so may result in a anti-SLAPP lawsuit which can effectively discourage pursuit of said remedies due to greater burdens to fight said suit and the possible severe sanctions if that anti-SLAPP suit is found to be valid under the law like paying attorney’s fees of the defendant being sued by Carrie Prejean/victims like her. 

Quoting from wikipedia’s article on SLAPP suits:

To win an anti-SLAPP motion, the defendant must first show that the lawsuit is based on constitutionally protected activity. Then, the burden shifts to the plaintiff, to affirmatively present evidence to show that they have a reasonable probability of prevailing on the action. The filing of an anti-SLAPP motion stays all discovery. This feature acts to greatly reduce the cost of litigation to the anti-SLAPP defendant, and can make beating the motion extremely difficult for the plaintiff, because they effectively must prove their case without the benefit of discovery.

If the special motion is denied, the order denying the motion is immediately appealable. Defendants prevailing on an anti-SLAPP motion (including any subsequent appeal) are entitled to a mandatory award of reasonable attorney’s fees. After an anti-SLAPP motion has been filed, a plaintiff cannot escape this mandatory fee award by amending their complaint. More than 200 published court opinions have interpreted and applied California’s anti-SLAPP law.

That was why I asked whether you had any specific evidence from the way this story unfolded, or whether you were just guessing based on her previous behaviors.

The specific evidence is that, as related by pablo, the supposed “ex-bf” was someone she only met in person once, and who she was basically stalking online, according to him.

I believe that not even one more forcible rape would occur on the uncensored planet than on the censored one.

Ignoring the fact that the issue here isn’t government suppression but forceful cultural disapproval, why exactly to you specify ‘forcible’ rape here?

Who cares why she did it?  What if she just did it to get off? 

Then she sexually harassed a guy, and there can be no particular moral expectation of privacy on her part. Just like we can release the Bill-O falafel tapes, which were similarly “just to get off”, the Prejean images can be released and it’s not any kind of sexual assault.

That’s the “so.” People have no moral expectation of privacy in regards to nekkid pictures or other sexual performances when they’re using them to exploit others.

When one human being becomes sexually involved on any level, and I include Amanda’s examples of sexually explicit emails or texts here, to show anything one has received whether they be explicit letters, or videos or pictures, is like inviting your buddies in to watch your lover while they are asleep naked.

Or when you invite your lawyer over to listen to the sexually explicit messages left by your boss in a campaign of sexual harassment against you? Is that a form of sexual assault, as well?

Why, or why not?

Shorter Chet:

Wow, you’ve really captured the nuance of my argument with that post, jackass. Great job.

Billingham: Ignoring the fact that the issue here isn’t government suppression but forceful cultural disapproval, why exactly to you specify ‘forcible’ rape here?

The title of this post is “Looking at releasing dirty pictures as a form of sexual assault.” From word one it describes posting an ex-lovers’s pix on the internet as “sexual assault,” or in other words as “rape.” That’s fine with me; I don’t object to the use of strong metaphors, nor do I believe that a word has one and only one meaning.  I was trying to distinguish between “rape” as a metaphor for all sexist or anti-woman behavior, and “rape” as physical sexual assault of a victim against her will.

Obviously if we have previously defined posting sexy pix of ex-lovers as “rape” in the context of this discussion then ipso facto my uncensored planet would have more “rapes” than the censored one; that’s just begging the question.  I don’t believe that’s what you were talking about in your comment c.) but I spelled it out to be clear.

t’s a conversation about what the cultural response to this behavior should be, not how the criminal justice system should (or should not) deal with it.

DTG: I disagree that these two things, “cultural response” and “criminal justice” can be separated.  The latter is a function of the former.  For instance, our society in general would assent to the propositions “(some) drugs are bad, mmmkay” and “rape, well consent is so complicated dontcha know.” But this shoddy thinking very much informs our criminal justice system.  So when people (including bloggers) start slinging around terms that are obviously legal terms like “sexual assault” they are invoking the criminal justice system whether they intend to or not.

Unless I am missing something, social censure and reframing of how one deals with this issue so it is treated much more seriously than it has been and actual criminalization of said behavior are two separate things.

Agreed.  But using the language of criminal law, i.e. ‘sexual assault’ invokes the criminal justice system, not social censure.  That was my main objection to this post.

As for calling it protected political speech....if that were the case...this may deprive Carrie Prejean and victims like her of even civil remedies under the law as any attempt to do so may result in a anti-SLAPP lawsuit which can effectively discourage pursuit of said remedies due to greater burdens to fight said suit and the possible severe sanctions if that anti-SLAPP suit is found to be valid under the law like paying attorney’s fees of the defendant being sued by Carrie Prejean/victims like her. 

I don’t know enough about Carrie Prejean to get into specifics.  But, if she is getting on her soapbox and talking though her megaphone about how people should and should not have sex, and somebody publishes a video to out her as a hypocrite, then the publisher should be protected by anti-SLAPP in this case.  If this is an ex-lover (or anyone else for that matter) publishing the video with the intent to shame and torment Carrie Prejean, then anti-SLAPP should not apply.  One case is political speech (i.e. “see this person is full of it - a total hypocrite") and the other is trying to hurt someone (i.e. “I’ll use the sexual double standard in society to make you look like a whore for leaving me you horrible, horrible person you!")

Can I just say that this is exactly why arguments about whether or not something is legally or morally rape/sexual assault/etc.  annoy the shit out of me (while still being one of the reasons I love feminist blogs)?

Because there is always at least one tool that comes along and uses existing legal definitions to try and pretend as if laws and mores are universal, unchangable, and not written by the people.  (er, well, our reps anyway)

Until Franken’s law passed, there was all kinds of shit that would never count as rape/sexual assault simply by virtue of the legal loophole of no one enumerating whose jurisdiction the assault fell under.  Now it does.

Back before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and various cases from the 1970’s and 80’s, sexual harrassment did not fit into any definitions of illegal activity either, broad or otherwise.  Now it does.

And it’s even dumber than usual to try to use this kind of “but this is what the law says!!!!” argument for this issue, because in this case it’s not just a matter of social changes bringing about new attitudes and situations, but also that technology has created new types of crimes that clearly need to be addressed, both legally and culturally.

Arguing that violating one’s privacy should never be considered, morally or legally, a form a of assault when done via video simply because it hasn’t been up till now is like arguing against laws dealing with spam simply on the grounds that, historically, we haven’t gone crazy and started prosecuting people for sending junk mail.

Amanda may not have been arguing for legal change, but I just have to say that everyone who has been arguing against strawAmanda’s argument that we need news laws have convinced me to side with strawAmanda.

“So when people (including bloggers) start slinging around terms that are obviously legal terms like “sexual assault” they are invoking the criminal justice system whether they intend to or not.”

Do please tell us what terms we are supposed to use instead.  And you do realize that the law originally borrowed them from public discourse, not the other way around, yes?

It’s like you are arguing that I shouldn’t talk about something taking a lot of work on a physics blog unless I’m talking about W=FxD.  (rolls eyes)

Which is just especially stupid in discussions about sexual assault because, as much as you all are pretending that “sexual assault” and “rape” are clear legal terms (as tools often do in these discussions), the truth is that the terms vary from widely state to state.  For all you know I live in one of the states where “rape” isn’t a legal term at all or where “sexual assault” is the legal term for acts of voyeurism.  (Or, you know, possibly both.  I don’t know how that all breaks down exactly by state.)

And again I point out that voyeurism is illegal everywhere in the US (so far as I know).  And I fail to see how the case we are discussing is fundamentaly different from those types of acts.

(but then I’m also a silly stupid woman who doesn’t understand how such laws could possibly be written in such a way that they don’t include upskirt photos, but whatever.)

One of the first defenses used by many news publications in the aftermath was that since he is not a “public figure”....he had a higher burden of proof to argue his libel and defamation cases against various newsmedia who printed such false and misleading stories.

You’ve got it backwards.

In the various libel suits Jewell filed against NBC, the New York Post, and the Atlanta Constitution-Journal (which is still in appeals, even though Jewell died 2 years ago), the contention of the defendants was that because Jewell had spoken to the press early on in the aftermath of the bombing, that therefore he WAS a public figure, and thus the standard for proving libel would be higher.

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan established the legal precedent that “actual malice” had to be proven in defamation lawsuits involving public figures, which is a more difficult standard for the plaintiff to prove than is the case for defamation suits in which the plaintiff is a not a public figure, and actual malice does not have to be proven to win a case.

This is one legal area in which it is actually worse to be a famous person, because it’s tougher for public figures to prove libel than it is for average citizens.

The specific evidence is that, as related by pablo, the supposed “ex-bf” was someone she only met in person once, and who she was basically stalking online, according to him.

Right.

And surely a nameless douchebag who tried to peddle a nude sex tape of Prejean to the highest bidder is a completely honest and upstanding citizen, whose claims should absolutely be trusted at face value, with no scrutinization whatsoever.  Because people like that have no other agendas than to be the defenders of truth.

And TMZ was the source of the douchebag’s version of events.  Surely a publication like TMZ deserves a Pulitzer Prize for their cutting edge investigative reporting on this story.

You blindly believe this guy’s version of events because you want to, because Prejean is a dislikeable and disagreeable person.  Fine.  But at least have the cajones to admit it.  If it were another woman involved in this story whose views you agreed with, you’d think that the guy selling his story was an untrustworthy douchebag.

Again… since Prejean is a homobigot, she deserves to lose her rights to bodily privacy.  That’s your belief in a nutshell.

Because… bitch had it comin’.

I’m sorry, I cannot accept the argument that the release of this tape is akin to any kind of assault, betrayal definitely, but not assault.  If say, a female governor states publicly that she is faithful to her husband and family, and a lover appears presenting erotic love notes from that governor we would not classify this as any kind of assault.

The issue I have with the argument is that it accepts the notion that women’s sexuality is not their own. The only issue surrounding Prejean’s tape should be what it says about her hypocrisy in regards to sex and and sexual imagery—see Digby’s post. The problem—which most people are alluding to—is not that Miss Prejean made a tape of herself engaging in sexual acts and that tape was made public, but that some condemn her for the act itself; rather, than what it says about her beliefs. One can harp about privacy, but this was not a private act—as another person was involved. And while we may question the motives of Prejean’s boyfriend the tape was given to him.

The overall problem—as exemplified by the MySpace suspension—is the belief that women’s bodies are not their own; that culture holds sexual ownership over them and thus needs to render judgment over their use. The problem is not that Miss Prejean is a sexual being, but that somehow her sexuality up for condemnation. In some way, perhaps, this condemnation is an assault on women as human beings.

Jesus wept.

I disagree that these two things, “cultural response” and “criminal justice” can be separated.

We separate them all the time.

Last time I checked, it isn’t an inherent criminal act to be involved in a white supremacist organization, or to espouse white supremacist views, or to participate in a march in which you and your buddies put on white hoods and robes and march down the stret letting everyone know how much you hate the damn negroes.

But the cultural response to such things is a pretty widespread public repudiation of these folks and their expressed views.  Hell, even most closet racists will at least give lip service to the position that the KKK is a bad thing.

What Amanda is arguing for is a cultural denunciation of the public exposure of private sex tapes that were intended for one person’s viewing only, and I’m not talking about instances in which someone like Bill O’Reilly is leaving creepy voicemails on someone else’s phone, but rather when a girlfriend or a spouse or even a casual fuckbuddy gives these videos/photos to a willing partner as a private sharing of their sexuality with the person.  The behavior of people like Ms. Prejean’s ex-bf should get treated by society as something so obviously offensive that people who do what Prejean’s ex-bf did should be seen as a creepy douchebags worthy of public scorn.  The actions of people like Prejean’s ex-bf should not be something to publicly celebrate, which many people in fact do in our present culture.  And the public scorn of the activity should be universally applied, and the personal shortcomings of the victim should have no bearing on our opinion of the matter.  Just as no decent person would ever celebrate the rape of Ann Coulter just because she’s Ann Coulter and she sucks, no decent person should be celebrating the public exposure of private sex videos of people like Carrie Prejean, just because she’s Carrie Prejean and we don’t like her political beliefs.

Lots of generally otherwise liberal people over on Daily Kos are having a blast cheering on the fact that Prejean has been publicly humiliated by this sex tape, and many of them are creepily asking each other where they can find it so they can watch it.  It’s pretty disgusting.  And it’s a testament to the still powerful influence of misogyny and the rape culture, even amongst otherwise progressive people.

I just want to thank you for this post; I had never thought of the shaming of women by releasing sex tapes/pictures this way before, and it’s like another bead in the string of understanding rape culture.

Okay, now I’m wondering why all of these guys are absolutely convinced that “sexual assault” only refers to rape.  If a fully-clothed guy gropes me on the bus, that is sexual assault.  It’s not first-degree assault.  It’s not rape.  But under the law it is sexual assault.

Sexual assault is not a euphemism for rape.  It is a large category that includes, but is not limited to, rape.  Meandering on about how having dirty pictures of you released to the media isn’t as bad as being sexually assaulted because sexual assault only means being raped and clearly it’s not as bad as actually being raped makes you look like an ignorant douche.

One can harp about privacy, but this was not a private act—as another person was involved.

Think precisely about what you just said.

If the only acts in society that can be considered private are those in which only one person is involved, than you have just given anyone permission to sit outside your bedroom window and videotape you and your partner having sex and then publish it on the Internet.  After all, since it involved more than one person, it’s not a private act according to your explicit definition of what constitutes a private act.  By the same token, when you are divulging your sexual insecurities to your therapist during a counseling session, we should be allowed to put a wiretap in the room, record the discussion, and then broadcast it on the Internet.  Since your conversation involved another person, it wasn’t a private act.  Hell, everytime you send an e-mail to another person, we should be allowed to hack into your account and read it, since it ceased being a private act the minute you hit “Send”, according to your definition.

See how that works?

Somethings are so private, they are yours alone.  Some other things are so private, they are only meant for you and one other person.  Other private things are intended for a very small select group of friends, and no one else.  Privacy rights don’t automatically end the moment another person becomes involved.

Sending a nude video/photo to another peron with the understanding that the video/photo in question are intended for that person’s eyes only IS a private act.

The title of this post is “Looking at releasing dirty pictures as a form of sexual assault.” From word one it describes posting an ex-lovers’s pix on the internet as “sexual assault,” or in other words as “rape.”

Sigh.  I will try to explain this in very small words:  not all sexual assaults are rapes. Rape is a form of sexual assault, but there are many other possible sexual assaults that are not classified as rapes.

The specific evidence is that, as related by pablo, the supposed “ex-bf” was someone she only met in person once, and who she was basically stalking online, according to him.

Thanks! I thought I might have been missing something.

I understand your position now.

Christ, now that I’ve read all the comments, I really shouldn’t be surprised, but somehow I am.

@catfood: “Also as if that information would be somehow useful to them. I mean what, is the idea to set a clear line so you can tiptoe right up to it? “

Exactly, exactly. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this repeated in the comments to posts dealing with rape culture issues. It typically starts with dudes making a semantic argument (here, it’s the insistence on disregarding the contents of the post for “legal” reasons) and ends with dudes demanding to know how much they can get away with without being called out. Of course, that’s never what they say they mean, but read between the lines. Add in a healthy amount of victim blaming and viola, you’ve practically filled the douchebag bingo card.

@jennygadget: THANK YOU. Sheesh.

AnglScarlett (65):

But KO should know better, i always thought he was kind of a feminist.

Nah. Olbermann’s a straight-up ‘60s liberal, as much a feminist as Stokely Carmichael.

CHV (104):

People are talking here like Prejean was metaphorically raped via her sex tape (which I have not seen or heard audio from; I don’t care to) getting leaked, when at best she suffered from a violation of trust (from the ex-bf). Thus, any comparisons to rape (be it real or metaphorical) and/or rape culture in this matter (much less victimhood) are fucking absurd.

Where do you live, exactly? People are obviously much more open about and accepting of female sexuality there, since you don’t see this as shaming or humiliating her at all.

Billingham (111):

Or you can escape incest charges in some states by marrying your cousin, but it doesn’t mean you can’t call it incest.

Hm. I’d see that one the other way, though it still more or less makes the same point.

I don’t see a whole lot of difference between releasing a sex tape without a person’s consent, and pulling down a person’s pants in public without their consent.  The argument that the person previously agreed to let the pants puller (privately) see her/him naked misses the point:  the pants puller is still exposing the person to others against her/his will.  I think the fraternity peephole metaphor is also accurate:  just because a woman agrees to have sex with a guy does not in any way mean that she invites his friends--let alone the entire internet--to watch.  Non-consensual voyeurism certainly ranks as a form of sexual assault in my book.  The fact that it’s not the exact equivalent of being violently gang-raped does not in any way mean that it’s not traumatic for the victim.

And, yes, this does not in any way detract from the fact that Prejean is a bigot.  Still, not even bigots deserve to be sexually assaulted--no one does.

“The overall problem—as exemplified by the MySpace suspension—is the belief that women’s bodies are not their own;”

I fail to see how not recognizing acts of vouyerism as such is doing anything to combat that.

“If say, a female governor states publicly that she is faithful to her husband and family, and a lover appears presenting erotic love notes from that governor we would not classify this as any kind of assault.”

1) It would definitely be a violation of privacy.  Whether it is a serious enough violation to deserve getting the law involved, I’m not sure.

I have mixed feeling about things like the Hart photos.  On the one hand, I care about whether or not lawmakers are lying to me and to the other people they have made commitments to.  On the other hand, I think the fact that we feel the right to know details of people’s private lives ends up creating a lot of these lies to begin with.  I do not care if any governer is “faithful” to their partner, I do care if they keep to whatever conditions of the relationship the two (or more) have worked out privately among themselves.

Which yes, creates a nice paradox.

2) There is a qualitative difference between text and images.  Especially when it comes to the ethics of making private communications public.

3) Really, why?

Captain Bathrobe—YES! an excellent analogy. Just because a woman consents to have sex with someone doesn’t mean that someone therefore has a right—ethical or legal, actually—to build a peephole so a bunch of other people can watch.

Not even if the woman is a straight-up hateful unpleasant turd.

Hypothetical question:

Instead of releasing the tape, guy for whatever reason (petty revenge or annoyance at Prejean’s holier-than-thou attitude) simply calls up a reporter and says “Look, she’s talking up a good game, but she has no problem getting down and dirty herself.” Maybe he doesn’t take the initiative but someone heard rumors and tracks him down.  He confirms the story, but doesn’t release the video.  Doesn’t even say he has it.

Reporter publishes story.  People immediately attack, claiming he’s making up lies.  Prejean comes out indignantly denouncing it and denies it happened.

Is it still a form of assault if he shows the video to someone to prove it happened?

MUSTO:  I‘m leaving. This is inappropriate.

OLBERMANN:  No. I‘m leaving. It‘s inappropriate.

MUSTO:  Let‘s both go.  So read her book.

OLBERMANN:  That would be great television, guest and host both walk off.

MUSTO:  Larry, come here.

OLBERMANN:  Larry‘s over on the other—No, one show at a time for Larry.  I love him to death. Her thing now is first amendment right of free speech is being stifled. She says that everywhere. But forget for a second that the first amendment does not protect you from anything except the government stifling your free speech. On that show last night, she stifled her own free speech.

MUSTO:  Actually Keith you didn‘t see the rest of it.  She was running down the hall looking for Lou Dobbs on his last night hoping he would interview her.  She thought he is conservative. He‘ll understand me or at least I‘ll find Anderson Cooper though of course he would want advice on marriage and that would be inappropriate.

OLBERMANN:  Yes, but I just wanted to make this one observation that this was not the first time she handled it all herself on camera.

MUSTO:  And she doesn‘t need a tech crew. She‘s had an amazing filmography, watch out Kate Winslet.

OLBERMANN:  Michael Musto of the “Village Voice.” Many thanks as always and now we‘re both going to leave.

Link

As far as I’m concerned, she’s a hypocrite who sided with the Patriarchy as one can see in the excerpt from her book at Hullabaloo, so pointing out that it turned on her isn’t about sexual assault, it’s about karma.

Sorry for the rapid posting, but I just have to kock this one down too:

“But there is this vast gulf between actual rape, which actually hurts its victim, and kiss-and-tell where the victim has to pump up artificial indignation to claim she’s suffered at all.  It is disrespectful to actual rape victims to compare their experience with this trivial, inconsequential nonsense.  “Ouch, I stubbed my toe!  It’s just like the Holocaust!!!” “

VICTIM BLAMING CRAP LIKE THIS IS WHY WHAT I WENT THROUGH WENT ON FOR SO LONG.

Because you, know, he didn’t touch me.  He was just looking.  And you know, all I have to do is check my windows every I need to shower. or change clothes. or put deoderant on. or adjust my bra.  Every.  Single.  Fucking.  Time.

So what was there to tell?

And do you know what has helped me finally “get over it” and feel comfortable in my own body for the first time since hitting puberty? “Actual rape victims” telling me that this is NOT trivial, inconsequential nonsense.  And is in fact part of a continuum.  That needs to be addressed everwhere and not just at the one end.

And that YES I have the fucking right to privacy and autonomy.  That when shit like this happens, it’s not because I trusted the wrong person.  or forget to check the windows.  It’s because someone else did something they weren’t supposed to do.

Because when you think the problem is you.... You trusting the wrong person.  You not understanding how evil people can be.  You forgetting to do that one think that would have kept you safe.  You making a big deal out of it when everyone says it’s not....

When you think the problem is everything but the other person and what they did and how everyone else reacted....

That’s when you don’t feel safe anywhere.

That’s why shit like this is assault.

The paradox is, the more we treat this as serious act that deserves serious conseuqences, the less these acts will hurt their victims.  The more we treat them as minor things that are the equivalent of (ex) friends fighting, the more lasting the affects of such assaults will be.

Not even exactly seeing how opposition to gay marriage and promotion of abstinence means that a tape of you masturbating, which you sent to someone of the opposite sex, makes you a hypocrite. The only way abstinence could *ever* work is with a healthy amount of masturbation and fantasy. Getting off on the thought that your partner is getting off on pictures of you getting off is the ultimate safe sex, after all… except when your douchebag partner releases the pics on the Internet.

Yeah, ok, the Christian Right isn’t okay with masturbation either. But it’s not as if Prejean committed an act that she’s openly spoken out against; she’s spoken about opposition to homosexuality and about opposition to sexual intercourse out of wedlock, but when has she actually said that it’s wrong to masturbate? Or it’s wrong to take pictures of yourself masturbating and send them to the person you want to have sex with?

It’s only hypocrisy by implication—she belongs to a group that decries masturbation, so it is implied that she too decries masturbation. The fact that she joined a beauty pageant at *all* makes her more of a Rudy Giuliani Republican than a Mike Huckabee Republican in the first place, so if her sexual mores aren’t as strict as the strictest members of the group she belongs to… well, hello, beauty pageant. We knew this already. She’s not a full-fledged member of the Christian Taliban, or she wouldn’t be in a beauty pageant.

I do not care if any governer is “faithful” to their partner, I do care if they keep to whatever conditions of the relationship the two (or more) have worked out privately among themselves.

I care only to the extent that a public official I support harms themselves and their ability to govern in the general public when they engage themselves in such activity.

I think the public expectation of an absolutely wholesome 1950s type happy nuclear family for our public officials is pretty absurd, but it is what it is.

I was never angry at John Edwards for having an affair outside of his marriage, except to the extent that I think it seems pretty shitty to take on a younger lover when your wife is dying of cancer.  That said, I don’t know exactly what Elizabeth Edwards did or did not know about the affair beforehand, or whether or not the affair took place with her approval.  What impact it had on their relationship is nobody’s business but theirs.

I was, however, angry at Edwards for getting himself involved in such an affair while actively seeking the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, when he knew full well that the eventual revelation of the affair (which was an inevitability once he decided to run for president) would have destroyed his chances in the general election.  Had he secured the nomination before the affair had been leaked, the information would have later destroyed him and resulted in John McCain becoming the 44th President of the United States.  It was an act of tremendous hubris on his part to think that he could have been involved in that affair and still manage to survive the fallout and win the presidency.  While it’s silly that America would have rejected him because of it, the reality is… America would have rejected him because of it.  He would have been directly complicit in helping to put another Republican in the White House (not to mention Sarah Palin at One Observatory Circle) at a time when America could afford no such thing.

“Is it still a form of assault if he shows the video to someone to prove it happened?”

Keith, I think that depends on who accused him of lying and how and who he showed the video to.

In other words, does he have a libel case?

And did he just toss the video out to the internets?  Or did he show it only to select reporters so that they could comfirm his story?  Or did he simply provide it as evidence to authorities?

Because when you think the problem is you.... You trusting the wrong person.  You not understanding how evil people can be.  You forgetting to do that one think that would have kept you safe.  You making a big deal out of it when everyone says it’s not....

When you think the problem is everything but the other person and what they did and how everyone else reacted....

That’s when you don’t feel safe anywhere.

That’s why shit like this is assault.

Tell it.

Sadly, I’ve given up on trying to sway some of the douchebags in this thread who fail to see how Carrie Prejean could have possibly been the victim in this, because after all, if she didn’t want that tape to be seen by others, she shouldn’t have sent it to her boyfriend.  Amiright?  Just as if you didn’t want some creep peeping in your shower window, you shouldn’t have left the window open.  Just as if a young college student doesn’t want to get raped, she shouldn’t be getting wasted and acting flirty around fratboys.

It’s all about why this was Prejean’s fault, why she deserved it, why you deserved what happened to you, and why the young flirty college student deserved to get raped by the fratboy.

Obviously, Prejean’s ex-bf couldn’t help it that he decided to show the video to others and try to sell it to the highest bidder.  He clearly had no personal agency for his actions in all of this.  If that stupid bitch hadn’t sent it to him, he wouldn’t have been able to broadcast it, so therefore it’s her fault that he showed it to other people.  Because hey, he’s a dudebro, and dudebros just can’t help their horny selves when they sexually shame women and treat them like the sluts they are.

Let’s take this out of the realm of sexual harms for a minute and look at a different clear victim-perpetrator situation.  If I leave my bicycle outside my friend’s apartment in a high-crime neighborhood, and I forget to properly secure it… is it then my fault if it gets stolen?  Was I a victim, or an idiot who got what I deserved because I foolishly forgot to put the lock on my bike?  There’s only one right answer.  And it begins with the letter “v”.  The victim-blamer would say, “well, you should have locked up your bike”.  The correct answer is “the asshole who stole something that wasn’t his shouldn’t have committed theft”.

In a world where the rape culture isn’t acceptable, young women like Prejean won’t have to worry about whether or not it’s safe to send a boyfriend a nude video of themselves, because it will be understood that she’s giving him an intimate gift that’s intended for his eyes only.  And if he rejects the rape culture, he’ll take reasonable precautions to ensure that nobody sees the video except himself.

And you know what would kick ass about such a world?  That it will be safe for a woman to send a lover a sexy nude video of herself without fear of having it being splattered all over the Internet, ever.  Me, I’d love for a girlfriend to send me such videos.  But in the current culture we live in, I would never ask or expect any woman to do that, and I wouldn’t blame her for being apprehensive about doing such a thing.  Because unfortunately, it just isn’t a terribly safe thing to do, because the rape culture has made it unsafe.  The reason it’s unsafe has nothing to do with whether or not a woman is willing to do such a thing… it has everything to do with Dudeville thinking it’s amusing to slut-shame their girlfriends or ex-girlfriends by showing images of her naked body to their buddies without her consent.

Man, I really need to read “Yes Means Yes”.

I care only to the extent that a public official I support harms themselves and their ability to govern in the general public when they engage themselves in such activity.

This.  My level of ire and caring about it is also proportional to the level said official/public figure lectured others about sexual morality, persecuted others for not living up to it, and/or otherwise acted as an effective busybody in the personal lives of others(i.e. Advocating for heteronormative marriage as public policy).

If said official has a greater tendency to do so publicly and said actions invariably hurt the groups s(he) marginalized, I do feel said official has become such a hypocrite that s(he) should not be in a position of power to pass policies/laws which affect me and other citizens of the US.  S(he) has lost all ethical/moral authority to be fit as far as I am concerned....

As such I do believe that there is a case to be made in holding public officials/figures to far higher standards as they have far greater access to the processes and powers which can affect the rest of us for better or worse.  A good quote encapsulating this is “With greater power comes greater responsibility.”....something most politicians and powerful public figures often seem to forget when they demand forgiveness for the same/similar acts they had denied others in past public denunciations. 

That said, I do agree with Amanda’s points that what happened to Carrie Prejean was offbase because of the manner in which it happened and the seriously negative implications of its approval in the larger culture.  What happened here was a betrayal of personal confidence that does speak volumes about the ex-bf than it does about her....especially considering the fact that if said ex-bf was seriously concerned about hypocrisy and public integrity....he could have done what Jennygadget pointed out:

Show it to authorities/reporters so they can confirm the story when challenged.  Not dish it out to the internet and TMZ which shows his intentions were less about high-mindedness and more about humiliating someone who trusted him and gaining some lucre....

Mnemosyne: Sigh.  I will try to explain this in very small words:  not all sexual assaults are rapes.

Spare me your sighs.  You may use the English language any way you choose.  However, if ordinary English-speakers use the phrase “sexual assault” in colloquial speech - that is, not deployed as a precisely-defined term of art in a law court, but just in common conversation - then everybody listening to them will interpret it as synonymous with “rape.” Listeners will assume that there must have been some physical attack, or at least the threat of physical attack.

But not in this thread, where the phrase “sexual assault” has been deliberately used from word one with a non-standard meaning, which then varies from poster to poster and from post to post.  In fact, that’s the whole purpose of the original post, which was to reframe the somewhat regrettable practice of playing kiss-and-tell with private pix and vids as “sexual assault,” a phrase which everyone uses to refer to far, far worse offenses, thus increasing the odium attached to the vid/pix misconduct by association.  By association with rape, to be exact.

Not even exactly seeing how opposition to gay marriage and promotion of abstinence means that a tape of you masturbating, which you sent to someone of the opposite sex, makes you a hypocrite.

Alara,

I believe the case for that argument goes to her proclaiming how “Christian values” are an integral part of her life and actions.  Though participating in a beauty pageant is already sketchy in this regard with many Christian sects......masturbation is certainly proscribed as it is regarded as a form of “self-abuse” as the only approved sex is a heterosexual one, only after marriage, and only in certainly approved positions by most Christian sects in the US.  Masturbation isn’t one of those approved positions....

Moreover, it goes to a reasonable way of thinking that if one wants to lecture/denounce others on proper moral behaviors....then s(he) better be prepared for others to denounce him/her if his/her own behaviors fall short of the standards they publicly expect/demand of others.....

Sadly, I’ve given up on trying to sway some of the douchebags in this thread who fail to see how Carrie Prejean could have possibly been the victim in this

I did not say that she was not the victim of something really quite offensive, I just refuse to accept the characterization of the offense against her as “sexual assault.” It’s not.  If you steal my car and wreck it I’m sure not going to like it but it isn’t “arson” or “embezzlement” or “murder,” and if you publish my racy private correspondence it isn’t “sexual assault.”

But if you insist on describing each and every action which negatively affects any woman as “sexual assault,” go for it.  It’s a free country.  And if you want to say “I drove to work today in my tomato,” you’re free to do that as well.  Be aware that if you ask for “an oil change for my tomato” you’ll probably get olive oil, which will cause your engine to seize, but it is your engine after all.

If you steal my car and wreck it I’m sure not going to like it but it isn’t “arson” or “embezzlement” or “murder,”

BUT IT’S THEFT. It is the taking of something that did not belong to me. It’s not an identical crime to swiping a candy bar from WalMart, and it’s not an identical crime to cracking a bank safe and cleaning it out, but it’s in the same group of offenses.

Similarly, victimization or intimidation of someone using your or their sexuality is sexual assault. It’s not identical to raping someone and it’s not identical to grabbing their breasts or rear on the bus but it’s in the same group of offenses.

I would ask “is it really that fucking complicated to grasp” but I know it’s not. Your last paragraph gives you away completely. Clearly you’re a misogynist asshat willing to believe we’re just hysterical bitchez describing every papercut and trodden-on toe as sexual assault.

“However, if ordinary English-speakers use the phrase “sexual assault” in colloquial speech”

Ordinary English speakers do not, for the most part, use the phrase “sexual assault” in colloquial speech.

Those of us that speak english and do use “sexual assault” commonly in the colloquial sense usually mean it exactly as Mnemosyne has defined it.

The only one that seems to be confused about the definition of sexual assault on this thread is you.  (seriously, even that other dude was mostly just trying to argue that threats aren’t assault and /or privacy violations aren’t threats/assault, not that sexual assault always = rape.)

Also, I missed the part where Pandagon was suddenly feminism 101.  O.o

DTG:

While I have issues with the whole rape=theft analogy (and I know that wasn’t your intent but it’s always sorta implied) I do have to say that analogies about bicycle theft always kinda of amuse me because the one time I’ve had to worry about my property being stolen on the level that I’ve had to worry about sexual assault was when I lived in Eugene, the bike theft capitol of Oregon if not the whole US of A.

Unlike most victim blaming anti-rape “advice”, advice about bike theft was always extremely reasonable.  People did shake their heads a bit when other people didn’t take the least bit of precautions with their bikes (like my first roomate, who left them out on the front lawn overnight), but no one tried to make excuses for the thieves or pretend like there was any confusion about who the bikes belonged to.  Plus, everyone still felt super sorry for the victim and worked really hard at not saying “I told you so.” It was more “you forgot to do something/made a bad call, that sucks.  What assholes.  I wish there was a way they could catch them.” And no one - not even the police! - expected anyone to do stuff like buy locks that cost more than a third of the cost of the bike, or not lock their bike up in public spaces and leave them.  In fact, the whole not spending more than a third of the cost of the bike on a lock was repeated - by the police! - in several places in order to remind people not to invest more in preventing theft than was healthy or wise.

cost versus reward, it’s a useful thing to consider, people.

You may use the English language any way you choose.  However, if ordinary English-speakers use the phrase “sexual assault” in colloquial speech - that is, not deployed as a precisely-defined term of art in a law court, but just in common conversation - then everybody listening to them will interpret it as synonymous with “rape.”

No, that’s the way that you interpret it.  I don’t think I’ve seen any woman in this thread—you know, the group that’s most likely to have been subjected to sexual assault at some point in their lives—getting confused and thinking that “sexual assault” only means “rape.”

You may have been using “sexual assault” as a euphemism for “rape,” but that’s not actually how the women around you have been using it, which is why we’re all getting pissed off at you—you’re insisting that your definition is the only proper definition despite common usage by most women and the definition in the law.

Tell you what—go out and ask 5 women of your acquaintance if they think that being groped on the bus by a stranger is sexual assault.  I guarantee you that all 5 of them will say it is.  Then ask 5 men of your acquaintance the same question.  I’m guessing that maybe 2 or 3 of them, at best, will agree that it is.  Does that mean that the 5 women you asked were all wrong, even though the law agrees with them?

Carrie Prejean.  Ted Haggard.  The Indiana episode.  One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others.

The two girls in Indiana is very much a case of clear-cut sexual assault by proxy: these were two people engaged in harmless, personal sexual play.  The images were clearly intended to remain private.  They were obtained by an anonymous 3rd party w/o permission & relayed to the school personnel who then used these images to browbeat not only the girls in question by also every other sexually active/interested kid in that school.  The two girls have been pilloried & slut-shamed by an all-male panel of authority figures who clearly have deep problems with the fact that Young People Like To Fuck Or Are At Least Curious About Sex & Sensuality.  Thanks to the actions of the school stepping far beyond their authority, the two girls now have a rock-solid case against the school for Abuse Of Power, & I sincerely hope that they put the screws to the school through the civil courts to reveal the ID of the stoolpigeon who handed over the images to them & that they make a fat pile of cash in the process of calling out those responsible for the whole fiasco.

By contrast, vile & heartless shits like T. Haggard have made huge personal fortunes & created vast financial empires by building upon the same paradigm that prompted the retrograde behaviours of the school personnel to hang the two girls out to dry.  The hate he & his ilk have sewn has done more real, tangible & longer-lasting damage than even most progressives are willing to admit.  How many kids have killed themselves out of the fear & self-loathing fostered by the toxic gospel espoused by these shits?  How many kids have had their lives made into living hells by being branded queer, whether it was true or not because they didn’t fit into the straightjacket that the Haggards of this world demanded that they wear?  How many people & families have been reduced to poverty because they adhere to this ludicrous “Gospel of Prosperity” bullshit out of desperation while the same creeps who sold it to them continue to grow rich in both money & influence?  I certainly don’t begrudge the Haggards for their sexual proclivities, but for setting themselves up as paragons of virtue by vilifying others for pursuing their own sexual self-interests & making money hand over fist in the process I have nothing but he coldest feelings of contempt, both for them & their congregation of enablers who got off on watching them do it.  By his actions, Mike Jones outed a hate-filled & despicable hypocrite & laid bare the evangelical movement for the vile, heartless swindle that it is.  Guy’s a hero & deserves a community centre named after him for exposing a spiritual snake-oil salesman.

Carrie Prejean was definitely setting herself up as a spokesperson for the hate-filled NOM cretins, & she was doing it out of her own free will & agency.  She was doing so by passing off the same sort of sex-is-bad/wrong/evil pubic persona of purity & virginity that the far-right lunatic-fringe professional scolds covet & fetishize.  No-one forced her to speak out in favour of reducing GBLT citizens to 2nd-class status & by signing on to the gay-hating NOM bandwagon, she was clearly looking forward to a lucrative free-ride on the wackjob-pundit wingnut-welfare gay-bashing gravy-train.  Her ex certainly comes off as an ass & his motivations are definitely questionable, but sometimes the right thing can get done, even if it’s for the wrong reasons.  Even a stopped clock can give the right time twice a day, & I’ve no problem with seeing some junior-league Ann Coulter/Rachel Marsden 2.0 losing their platform before she inflicted real, permanent & lasting damage.  This was not a form of assault.  This was revealing Prejean as a hypocrite who wants strict rules & regulations for everyone else & total freedom for her & her crew.

For the two girls in Indiana, they need all the support progressives can muster.  A letter/email/phone call campaign to the school board letting them know how far out of line their employees are would be an excellent place to start.

But for the Haggards & Prejeans currently cluttering up the landscape?  Fuck ‘em.  Fuck the bloody lot of ‘em. For the lives they’ve succeeded in making miserable, they deserve nothing but scorn, derision & ridicule.  No Sympathy.  No Pity.  No Mercy.  They’re vain, hateful & totally convinced their bigotry entitles them to a paycheque.  They’re the scum of the earth & really ought to thank us for stomping them back into the shit they came from.

(but then I’m also a silly stupid woman who doesn’t understand how such laws could possibly be written in such a way that they don’t include upskirt photos, but whatever.)

Of course there is a big difference between a video you participate in making and a video made surreptitiously.  Hiding cameras to get sexually charged footage should be criminalized.
But what do I know, I’m only a silly lawyer. 

Do please tell us what terms we are supposed to use instead.  And you do realize that the law originally borrowed them from public discourse, not the other way around, yes?

It’s like you are arguing that I shouldn’t talk about something taking a lot of work on a physics blog unless I’m talking about W=FxD.  (rolls eyes)

The term ‘sexual assault’ is very rarely used (if at all) in normal speech.  It’s a technical term.  In this sense, it is wholly unlike ‘work’ which has its use in normal conversation and a rarely used use in classical mechanics.  ‘Sexual Assault’ is more like ‘eigenvector’ - neither are words that come up in normal conversation.

I would instead suggest that we use words that get to the root of the problem like ‘invasion of privacy’, or ‘emotional torment’ instead of jumping to expand legal definitions.

I would instead suggest that we use words that get to the root of the problem like ‘invasion of privacy’, or ‘emotional torment’ instead of jumping to expand legal definitions.

Funny, that’s what people said about “expanding legal definitions” to include things like sexual harassment.  After all, it was no big deal, so why were women going around complaining so dramatically about it?  If they didn’t want to have sex with their boss to keep their job, they could just find another job—problem solved.

It’s not like our legal system was handed down on high by God Almighty and can never, ever be modified.  Sometimes people have to step up and say, “You know, getting raped by my husband should be a crime.” Why is it so patently ridiculous to say that releasing sexual videos or photos without the person’s permission should be a crime that we can’t even discuss it?

As for the argument that evidence is needed to back up a claim that someone is being hypocritical or unethical, we have a pretty good system for that kind of thing already: certain records (phone records, medical records) are held private by law and professional ethics unless they’re subpoenaed in a legal proceeding. I don’t see how that’s not good enough for things like sex tapes and nude pictures.

Evidence like motel receipts and pictures of someone in a car with a mistress, though, are not in the same league as sexual pictures or tapes, so as far as I’m concerned, release those with abandon and impunity if someone is being a hypocritical ass.

You blindly believe this guy’s version of events because you want to, because Prejean is a dislikeable and disagreeable person.  Fine.  But at least have the cajones to admit it

I don’t “blindly believe” it - recall, when I referred to this guy as a sleaze - I just have no reason to believe the version of events that makes Prejean into a blameless victim, either. You’ve given me no reason. The fact that she’s a hateful bigot and a relentless, self-absorbed self-promoter with all the depth of a footbath doesn’t give me much of a reason to believe her. Indeed, it’s impossible to say who to believe, which is why it’s just as likely that she was engaged in sexual harassment and not genuine intimacy.

“Of course there is a big difference between a video you participate in making and a video made surreptitiously.  Hiding cameras to get sexually charged footage should be criminalized.
But what do I know, I’m only a silly lawyer. “

Clearly, you are missing the point of the comment.  (in favor of repeating yourself) Which was that I can’t understand how voyuerism laws could possibly be written in ways that don’t include upskirt photos.  (Although the fact that you are a lawyer gives me some idea) And yet, apparently they are, as the courts have repeatedly decided that the existing laws don’t cover such actions.

The reasoning being much like your reasoning for ignoring the difference between private videos made with permission and distributed without permission and private videos made with permission and distributed with permission:  women who are silly enough to walk around in skirts should not entertain any expectation of privacy.  I mean, the opening is right there, in public, nevermind that people’s eyes are not generally looking at me from down on the sidewalk.  Therefore it doesn’t fall under voyuerism - therefore if you want the legal system to do anything about it, you need to start writing specific laws addressing this particular act.

Let me tell you, the fact that I have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding what is under my skirt - whether I’m in public or not - was news to me.  As I’m guessing it was to just about every woman on the planet.

“Why is it so patently ridiculous to say that releasing sexual videos or photos without the person’s permission should be a crime that we can’t even discuss it?”

I know, right?  This is what drives me so crazy about these discussions.  The arguments against expanding legal definitions (esp when it comes to sexual assault) no matter the actual act being discussed tend to come down to “but that’s not what it is now!!!!!!” So?  Argue that it has no effect on the intended victims, argue that it’s bad law, or competes with other rights, or would be impractical to implement.  Hell, ask for clarification if you need to. (*laughs self silly*) Just. Dont. Fucking. Argue. Semantics.  It’s (almost always) really fucking beside the point.

And, you know, pretty much shows that have no real argument anyway.

“I would instead suggest that we use words that get to the root of the problem like ‘invasion of privacy’, or ‘emotional torment’ instead of jumping to expand legal definitions.”

Around here, we like both/and.  The need for privacy laws that are just about privacy does not preclude the need for privacy laws that specifically address sexualized violations of privacy.  No more than the need for assault and battery laws precludes the need for laws that specially address sexualized assault and battery.

And you know, I have to say that this is probably the creepiest thing you’ve said on this thread, which is saying a lot.  Guys that conceed that something is kinda sorta maybe wrong - but still insist that you shouldn’t! call it! rape/sexual assault/sexual harrassment!  it has nothing! to do! with sexual assault!  (despite, you know, the obvious sexual component) make me wonder why they are so concerned with that label.

just have no reason to believe the version of events that makes Prejean into a blameless victim, either.

A person doesn’t have to be blameless to be a victim, Chet.

Why is it so patently ridiculous to say that releasing sexual videos or photos without the person’s permission should be a crime that we can’t even discuss it?

Discuss away.  I think it’s a bad idea, consider that my initial contribution to the discussion.  And I don’t think expanding the category of ‘assault’ beyond actual assaults to be a good idea any more than the category of ‘rape’ should be expanded to cover identity theft crimes.  I’ve often heard victims of identity theft saying that they felt “raped” but I don’t think that ‘rape’ is the correct category.  ‘Assault’ generally means force or threat of force is used.  That’s pretty broad in itself.

Sometimes people have to step up and say, “You know, getting raped by my husband should be a crime.”

I.e. marriage does not equal consent.  That’s not stretching the category of rape out of shape - it still involves actual sex without actual consent.  That is, rape.

Clearly, you are missing the point of the comment.

Uh, no jennygadget, I’m saying there is a big difference between making an explicit vidoe of someone without their knowledge and consent and someone publishing a video that was made with the knowledge and consent of the parties involved.  Try again.

And you know, I have to say that this is probably the creepiest thing you’ve said on this thread, which is saying a lot.  Guys that conceed that something is kinda sorta maybe wrong - but still insist that you shouldn’t! call it! rape/sexual assault/sexual harrassment!  it has nothing! to do! with sexual assault!

Actually, I said that publishing videos with the purpose to torment/shame/embarrass someone was completely wrong.  But hey, as long as you have a point to make, why bother responding to the one I made.  Actually, ‘sexual harassment’ is a good label for this sort of behavior - a good legal category to use.  But rape involves penetration without consent, and assault involves the use of force or threat of force.  Expand beyond the bare definitions and these words become meaningless.  If anything jennygadget or richard goblin doesn’t like becomes an ‘assault’, then the word loses all meaning and becomes useless.

Language is a public phenomenon - which means that we have to use words with some consistency.  Language evolves over time, but enough of it must remained fixed over a given duration or we won’t be able to communicate.

Just. Dont. Fucking. Argue. Semantics.  It’s (almost always) really fucking beside the point.

Really?  I think clarity and precision in language are very important.  We think in language, we communicate in language.  We interact with the world using language.  Semantic arguments are usually the initial arguments we make to establish the very possibility of debate over the substantive matters.  Lose the semantic argument and you are in a bad position to win the substantive argument. But then again, when you don’t have an actual substantive argument, accusing the other side of arguing semantics is one tactic to try and divert attention.  Nice try, thanks for playing.

And I don’t think expanding the category of ‘assault’ beyond actual assaults to be a good idea any more than the category of ‘rape’ should be expanded to cover identity theft crimes.

So you’re arguing that exhibitionism and voyeurism should no longer be classed as sex crimes?  After all, they don’t involve actually touching anyone, so how can they be classed in the same spectrum as sexual assaults?

“Uh, no jennygadget, I’m saying there is a big difference between making an explicit vidoe of someone without their knowledge and consent and someone publishing a video that was made with the knowledge and consent of the parties involved.  Try again. “

Which has absolutely nothing to do with my comment.  You know, the one about how/why the fuck are upskirt photos not covered by existing voyuerism laws?  To refresh your memory I said:

“(but then I’m also a silly stupid woman who doesn’t understand how such laws could possibly be written in such a way that they don’t include upskirt photos, but whatever.)”

You then quoted THAT PORTION - not the part where I said “And I fail to see how the case we are discussing is fundamentaly different from those types of acts.” which would have made more sense - and added

“Of course there is a big difference between a video you participate in making and a video made surreptitiously.  Hiding cameras to get sexually charged footage should be criminalized. But what do I know, I’m only a silly lawyer.”

I then CLARIFIED:

“Clearly, you are missing the point of the comment.  (in favor of repeating yourself) Which was that I can’t understand how voyuerism laws could possibly be written in ways that don’t include upskirt photos.  (Although the fact that you are a lawyer gives me some idea) And yet, apparently they are, as the courts have repeatedly decided that the existing laws don’t cover such actions.”

You then once again repeated yourself.  Dude, seriously.

(what was it you were saying about clarity again?)

But you know what, you are right, everything on this thread is about you, so clearly that comment was not a wtf aside related to the overall issue but in reality was all about your views on a completely different act.

“Really?  I think clarity and precision in language are very important.”

Funny, I thought I mentioned...oh, yes there it is: “Hell, ask for clarification if you need to.”

(although clearly you don’t have a good track record for listening to it.)

Discussing semantics is good.  Arguing about semantics (which generally involves telling people they are wrong! wrong! wrong! wrong! because they chose a different word than you would have)?  stupid.  and derails the actual conversation.

“Actually, ‘sexual harassment’ is a good label for this sort of behavior - a good legal category to use. “

DUDE there are places where sexual harrassment = sexual assault.  How many time do we have to fucking say this?

In fact, that’s true just about everyplace since an act earns the distinction of sexual harassment largely in relation to the location in which it occurs and the professional relationships of the people involved, not based on the severity (or lack thereof) of the act itself.  If I grope one of my employees, that’s BOTH sexual harrassment AND sexual assault.

Also, are you actually trying to argue that sexual harassment is a good (legal) word, but sexual assault isn’t - because assault involves threats...and sexual harassment doesn’t?  Ever?  what?  (Also, you seem to be implying that sexual harassment is always the less severe act.  huh?) How exactly would you define “a hostile work environment” or quid pro quo harrassment then, since your definition clearly doesn’t involve threats?  That’s what pushes the grope into not just a simple sexual assault but into sexual harrassment territory - the implied threat that this won’t be the last time.

And really, I’m supposed to believe that you agree with Amanda in general, and just think that harrassment would have been a better term than assault?  Because I kinda think if that was all and you had the best of intentions, you would have just said that to begin with.

but...feel free to call it sexual harassment, I’m not going to argue that YOU should do otherwise..

But didn’t it take a long time for things like voyeurism and--the classic case--stalking to get defined as crimes, largely because physical force was absent?  Authorities would say things like “I know it’s upsetting, but it’s not technically against the law,” right?  In the case of stalking I feel like it was no more than 15 years ago that the consensus swung towards treating it as a crime.  The law is slow to adapt in cases where “touching” can’t be established.  And here it seems like the way “sexy pictures” are being handled, like the Indiana case, may indicate that the law is much more geared towards seeing “sexy picture” through a frame of “pornography” than private, consensual, expressive communication.  Something’s gotten all mixed up.

(Sorry, my last was @ Mnemosyne #187)

i quit reading the comments. i just…

look, everyone whose trying to “defend” the right of people to gossip and spread stories about pictures of girls naked [not that there are many, at least not by this time] i am going to tell you EXACTLY WHY there is NEVER a “good” or “ok” reason to spread pictures, or gossip, or ideas about women being “sluts” or “whores”

my step-dad raped me the first time when i was 12. the ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD knew about it - one of the teenage boys who lived near me, he hid outside my window and TOOK PICTURES.

and no one did anything for 4 years. dozens of people KNEW that my 55 year old step-father was “having sex” with me - they’d say snarky shit all the time, like “if you don’t want what Denelian has, don’t let your tits be seen”. they’d say to my mom “it must be hard, living with a daughter who looks like a Barbie Hooker”. [i don’t know if they thought my mom knew, or if they were trying to “warn” her about it. my mother did NOT know, because she didn’t WANT to know]. my middle school years were sheer hell, and i had at LEAST three different male teachers trying to “get a little extra” from me. one teacher tried to flunk me on a test, and the *only* reason shit like that didn’t work was because in this one small area, my mother backed me to the hilt. she KNEW i got an A on that test. but she didn’t know it was sexual harrassment. again, because she didn’t WANT to know.

bullshit like this story, this is what ALLOWS an entire neighborhood to watch and listen to a 55+ man rape his 12, 13, 14, 15 year old step-daughter, and blame the girl for it. because i just stopped fighting after the 5th or 6th time, the neighbors were SURE that i “had seduced him”. after all, if i didn’t “want” him, i wouldn’t look like i did, and i would fight harder; if i REALLY didn’t want to have sex with him, i would have died first.

Assult is a good word for doing things like this - teenage girls goofing around, being emotionally attacked and blackmailed because they are examining their sexuality? being forced to go through PUNISHMENT AT SCHOOL for things done NOT AT SCHOOL *and* NOT DURING SCHOOL ACTIVITIES? taking pictures of a naked, partially naked, half naked, or clothing changing woman, and then sharing these pictures? trying to get “upskirt” shots? spreading rumors and slander and lies about what a girl or woman has or has not done sexually?

this is the EXACT ENVIROMENT that led to my 5 years of hell. 4 years of being raped by my step-father, until a new principle was assigned to the school, a new principle who BELIEVED that, even if i “consented” to “having sex”, what was going on WAS STILL A CRIME. was, at the VERY least, statutory rape.

the neighbors *still* talk about what a whore i am, 16 years later. my mother got remarried when i was 25 [the house that it happened it was rented out until 3 years ago]. the very first thing the neighbors said to my mother’s new husband, after they moved back into the house, was “Watch out for the oldest one; she’ll get you and destroy *your* marriage, too”.

and all because i “looked like that”, so it HAD to be *my* fault.
because if a girl is in *ANY* way “morally compromised” - if she, say, had large breasts at the age of 12 and wore the same kinds of clothes other children her age wore; if she, say, had a picture taken of her in a bikini; if she, say, as a joke, dressed up in lingerie with a friend and took joke pictures; if she, say, kissed a person in public; if she, say, took a shower at school and a boy broke into the girls locker room to take pictures [or, specifically, set up a video phone in a recessed corner that no one noticed until after he broad-cast the 30 seconds of footage]; if a girl does ANYTHING someone dislikes - then ANY “punishment” she suffers is “justified” because she was “asking for it”.

and, yeah, this applies to 12-year-old-girls and 30-year-old-women.
as long as shit like this is ALLOWED, and the people who “leak” the pictures or videos or stories get away with it while the girl or woman who was abused gets PUNISHED for it, worse things will continue to happen.
when the fuck are we going to start holding RAPISTS responsible for rape? abusers responsible for abuse? stalkers responsible for stalking?

denelian @ 191:

delurking to thank you for this. i have a very similar history and have been trying to work up the nerve to say what you just said.

to those of you who say taking this kind of thing seriously “disrespects actual rape victims"- LISTEN to actual rape victims, why don’t you? and listen to the victims of slut-shamers and voyeurs like Prejean’s ex-bf and, hell, every misogynist fucker on the web who is now sniggering about how stupid she was to take pictures of her own body and (gasp!) let somebody see them. and, especially, listen to the people who have experienced both these things.

i was raped, violently and repeatedly, resulting in permanent physical injury. i was seduced and molested, from a very young age, by pedophiles and sexual sadists, resulting in severe damage to my ability to form healthy relationships (this, at least, is fixable, with a lot of work). i was spied upon and gossiped about by my neighbor, a kid my own age, who never laid a hand on me.

don’t you fucking tell me, don’t you tell ANYONE, that ANY of these experiences weren’t totally fucking horrible. i will never be able to speak to one of my former classmates without wondering whether they know exactly what my genitals look like (or how they looked between the ages of 12 and 18), and what various people are known to have done to them, and how my neighbor’s friends thought they might taste.

the fact that i sometimes take my clothes off doesn’t give ANYONE the right to spy on me and then gossip about it, BECAUSE I DID NOT CONSENT TO THAT. the fact that Prejean took pictures of herself and sent them to one other person doesn’t give that person the right to show them to ANYONE else, let alone the entire fucking internet, because she DID NOT CONSENT TO THAT.

i’d ask what the hell is wrong with you people that you cannot grasp this very simple point, but after thirty-odd years of listening to the same old justifications, i have a pretty good idea.

Also, are you actually trying to argue that sexual harassment is a good (legal) word, but sexual assault isn’t - because assault involves threats...and sexual harassment doesn’t?  Ever?  what? [...] How exactly would you define “a hostile work environment” or quid pro quo harrassment then, since your definition clearly doesn’t involve threats?

Sexual Assault is a subset of Sexual Harassment.  You can be harassed without being assaulted.  I know this because I did plaintiff-side sexual harassment cases when I was at Legal Assistance in Massachusetts.  I’ve made and won arguments that a workplace was hostile.

Sorry, but I’ve got no patience for the garbage you are spewing at me.  I’ll stand on my record.

“Sexual Assault is a subset of Sexual Harassment.”

Actually, technically, it *can* be - it depends on the situation.  Including the laws of that particular state.  It is, after all, possible to be assaulted without being harassed.  (And also, if your argument is that sexual assault is a subset of sexual harrassment, how again does that make sexual harassment the preferred term?  Because if sexual assault is a type of sexual harassment, then calling something sexual harassment hardly precludes the possibility of it also being sexual assault.)

“You can be harassed without being assaulted.”

Really, gosh.  That’s news to me (not).  And has fuck all to do with anything I said how?

“I’ve made and won arguments that a workplace was hostile.”

Yeah, so?  Explain how you did so without ever bringing up threats (including implied threats).  You know, as in a threatening environment.

*******

denelian and nopinkdresses.  ((((hugs)))) and my eternal gratitude for sharing your stories.  And denelian?  Yeah, I had large breasts at age 12 too.  That was actually when all that happened to me in fact.  Plus, you know, random guys up to twice my age yelling at my from their cars, and all the other usual shit.  The slut shaming that I’d picked up already played a large part in my not telling as well.  :(

What a surprise.  Yet another thread in which Men Who Know Better Than Silly Bitchez (tm) show up to teach all us silly bitchez how wrong we are about everything that directly effects and harms us - and not them - because their totally correct male opinions come from their infallible manly meat sticks of truth (tm).

What, you stupid chicks think you have a right to privacy! Ha!  not when Men Who Know Better Than Silly Bitchez disagree!

“i’d ask what the hell is wrong with you people that you cannot grasp this very simple point, but after thirty-odd years of listening to the same old justifications, i have a pretty good idea. “

LOL. Totally. If this were to happen to them, you can be damn sure their collective response wouldn’t be “eh, I was asking for it”.

Sorry, but I’ve got no patience for the garbage you are spewing at me.  I’ll stand on my record.

Oh, boo hoo.  You mean that when the actual experience of actual women contradicts what you claim is inherent in the law, you’re going to prance away complaining about how mean we are to point out that you’re wrong?

You can talk in abstractions all you want, but as you can see, none of this is abstract to us.

“You can talk in abstractions all you want, but as you can see, none of this is abstract to us. “

This clearly does not matter to the Men Who Know Better Than Silly Bitchez.  What matters is that the Men Who Know Better Than Silly Bitchez get to ignore us and tell us all about their uninformed, privileged opinions.  Cuz that’s where truth comes from!!!

What THEY say is real and true and what we say is hysterical and imaginary, you know, cuz we hate men and sex and are all Solanis devotees.

This is a most difficult issue, to wit:

he fact that Prejean took pictures of herself and sent them to one other person doesn’t give that person the right to show them to ANYONE else, let alone the entire fucking internet, because she DID NOT CONSENT TO THAT.

In a way, she did exactly that.  When you give me a gift, absent some agreement, it is mine to do with as I please.  Yeah, I think he was an asshole, but consent can’t be implied but neither can lack of consent in this case.  The agreement must be explicit. 

And, as DTG implied, when you become a celebrity your right to privacy goes out the window.  Become a celebrity is, weirdly, a kind of a consent to attract attention good or bad.

“In a way, she did exactly that.  When you give me a gift, absent some agreement, it is mine to do with as I please.  Yeah, I think he was an asshole, but consent can’t be implied but neither can lack of consent in this case.  The agreement must be explicit. “

On other words, the default position for women is always “yes”, unless she says “no”. But this totes doesn’t help to support rape culture.  nosiree!

When you give me a gift, absent some agreement, it is mine to do with as I please.

Except that it gets really tricky when you’re talking about a “gift” that’s in the realm of IP content.

If I send you a letter, the physical copy of the letter is yours to do with as you please, but that doesn’t give you the right to publish the contents.  If I send you a recording of a song I wrote, you can’t sell (or give away) copies of it.  If I send you a draft of a book I’ve written, you can’t turn around and cut a deal with a publisher because I’ve “given away” the rights to the book.  Hell, if I starred in a professional porn video and sent you a copy (we’re well into the realm of hypothetical “I” and “you” here, obviously), you wouldn’t be permitted to duplicate it and distribute copies.  So why in this one case do we assume that privacy is waived?

“So why in this one case do we assume that privacy is waived? “

Because the bitch deserved it.  Don’t you know that sex tapes are exactly like any other gift, that can totally be re-gifted, because the slut didn’t say you couldn’t!  makes perfect sense.

jfpbookworm:

In short, you are wrong.  Unless you have some legal protect the odds are as much against you as for you.  That’s why there are copyrights, patents, model releases, etc.  Now, she might get away with legal action because she was the photographer (I guess) and so might claim to have a implied copyright.  But if the prick did it out of malice and not for commercial purposes, good luck.

magis, as the “author” of the videos in question, she could have a copyright claim.  you don’t have to have previously registered a work with the copyright office to sue for infringment; however your remedies are limited to actual damages, as opposed to the statutory damages you can get if you registered before the infringement.  anyway, this situation is different because presumably she wasn’t planning on ever releasing the videos to the public for money, so her damages would be incredibly speculative.

the copyright regime really isn’t the best means of bringing legal action in a situation like this.  i believe that this should constitute some type of actionable sexual harassment as i agree with amanda that this is definitely on that spectrum.

Interesting points. Let me ask the following question: most of the sites you describe that are used to “humiliate” and the like are sites regarding cheating girlfriends. Go ahead and look it up. Is it assault to go out and fuck another guy and possibly bring home an STD while in a supposedly monogamous relationship? People go nuts when they learn of betrayal and show the same lack of self control when they post photos of their cheating ex on said websites that the cheater did when they couldn’t help but have sex with someone. I have confronted this situation and one of my first acts was to erase any naked pictures or videos of the lying hypocrite because I would never want to look at them again, however, I don’t condemn someone as having assaulted another if they don’t show the same self-control. If we want the word “assault” to have any definition we choose, than isn’t cheating an assault against the betrayed party as well? What is the backstory here, what was his reason for posting these videos?

Something can be legal and still unethical.

There. So can we stop arguing about how releasing the video was legal and get back to the moral/ethical question of whether it was right? (spoiler: its not)

I agree with Amanda that it is assault but that doesn’t mean that it is actionable under the laws as they stand.  Or, at the very least, it is legally iffy.

BStu:  There is a point to all this legal talk.  If it isn’t illegal, it should be.  Wouldn’t be nice to have it actionable in any circumstance whatsoever to release a nude photo of someone without written consent?  Period, end of story.  Feel better now?

the point of me telling my story [and opening myself up to humiliation - thank you Nopinkdresses and Jennygadget! i hate that others have gone thru it, but it does make me feel a bit better when other people who have been through it share… if that makes sense, at all. ] was

well, it was very VERY simple. I DON’T CARE what a person’s “reasons” are - UNLESS ACTUAL CONSENT HAS BEEN GIVEN, there is NO consent given!
so fucking WHAT if your girlfriend “cheated” on you?! tell people she hurt you - THAT is allowed - but publishing private “sexy” pictures of her?
CROSSES THE FUCKING LINE!

i say, and say again, UNLESS there is EXPLICIT consent given, there is NO CONSENT.

and as long as there are fucking assholes who do shit like this - and as long as there are assholes who DEFEND THE “RIGHTS” of assholes to do this! - then things that happened to me are going to KEEP HAPPENING.

i DO NOT FUCKING CARE what Prejune “did” to “deserve” humiliating photos of herself being posted to all and sundry, ruining her life. I DON’T CARE IF SHE CHEATED. IT DOES NOT MATTER.

i am going to be VERY clear.
there is NOTHING that a person does, NOTHING, that makes it ok.
nothing a woman does makes it “ok” to RAPE her
nothing a woman does makes it “ok” to ASSAULT her
nothing a woman does makes it “ok” to HARRASS her
nothing a woman does makes it “ok” to PUBLISH or otherwise spread “sexy” pics or video.

NOTHING.

and, unless CONSENT was recieved, it may not be “illegal” to publish pictures of a naked or otherwise “sexy” woman, but it IS WRONG TO DO SO. NOT MATTER THE REASON.
and FURTHER, if said pics or video were obtained WITHOUT the depicted woman’s consent, you HAVE done something illegal. those poor girls in Indiana - their privacy rights have been violated. stealing “compromising” pictures of people *IS* illegal.

but as long as assholes defend the assholes who do, we will be stuck in this fucking rape-culture, where a man can drug and brutally rape a 13-year-old girl, and lots of people will try to prevent him from having to go to court or recieve punishment, because A) she wasn’t “virginal” and so therefore it COULD NOT be rape, and B) he makes such great movies, it can’t be rape and C) she was a SHE, how do you rape a female? women and girls aren’t PEOPLE, women and girls ARE SEX. so it’s OBVIOUSLY not rape.

people who defend shit like this make me ill.

This, Denelian. You put it better than anyone could.
I’m so sorry about what you had to go through and I can’t believe some people still don’t get it, even when it’s spelled out for them…

“Lack of self-control”, Team Wookie? So if a guy “lacks self-control” and harrasses, beats up or rapes his cheating girlfriend, it’s a-ok in your world because the bitch deserved it? Guess what, what happens within a relationship is PRIVATE. We’ve all been hurt or screwed over by boyfriends, friends, family members, etc. That’s a sad fact of life. However, not all of us think it gives us the right to publically humiliate someone… Where does retaliation stop? If your girlfriend is mad that you released nude pictures of her in retaliation for her cheating, is it ok for her to trash your car because she “lacks self-control” too? Do you think personal vendettas are cool? Or are there only ok when it’s women being punished?

Actually, my understanding was that a release is needed to publish photos of anyone who can be identified in a photo that is sold or shown as part of a money making venue.  Don’t all professional photographers have to have signed releases on file even for their portfolio shots?

Actually, my understanding was that a release is needed to publish photos of anyone who can be identified in a photo that is sold or shown as part of a money making venue.

I think I get what you mean, but I would imagine any such restriction is more limited than just “for use by a for-profit entity”.  After all… virtually every newspaper and television news organization is in fact, part of a for-profit company.  Even though we don’t typically think of a Washington Post writer as someone pushing a product for sale, that is in fact what they are.  And I’m pretty sure newspapers publish photos of people all the time without a release form.  Obviously not nude photos, but photos taken without express permission nonetheless.

Professional sporting and concerts have legal releases for the use of your image as well, though you don’t actually “sign” anything… it’s printed on the back of your ticket, and by using the ticket to enter the event, you implicitly accept all of the legal releases included therein.  Which is also why a fan at a baseball game cannot reasonably expect to collect damages from the team if they happen to get hit in the face with a foul ball while they are sitting in their seat in the stands.  On rare occassions when fans have been seriously injured by flying objects, teams have sometimes proactively settled to avoid negative PR, but if the fan tried to sue, their case probably wouldn’t get too far - you have waived your right to not be hit by a flying baseball simply by choosing to be at the game.

Scarlet, enroll in a formal logic course of some sort immediately, your lack of reasoning skills astounds me and I think you might be a logical danger to yourself and others. Yes, you are so amazingly right on, I am totally condoning beating, other abuse of women and all of the other things that you spelled out in your post so eloquently. Oh and the best piece of your post is that I am saying it’s only ok if it is a woman being punished, you could not be more correct here, amazing, it’s like you are in my mind reading my thoughts

Wookie;

you are so caught up in “winning” this “argument” with “logic” that you TOTALLY missed the fucking POINT.

whether you meant it to or not, the post Scarlet is responding to? it reads like so: “isn’t it terrible when someone sexually cheats on you? *I* would not personally then try and completely destroy the life of someone who cheated on me, but i can understand WHY some people DO try and completely destroy the life of someone who cheated on them”

being cheated on hurts. it gets better.

some asshole posting pics of you having sex with him HURTS, and can cost you your JOB, your LIVELIHOOD. i know a woman who didn’t even KNOW that sex with her husband was being taped. ALSO when he raped her, he taped it. on the one hand, those videos secured a conviction of rape; on the other hand, the law firm she was with asked her to resign, and it appears no other law firm wants her - because he posted those videos all over, sent them to her bosses - and they didn’t care that they were made illegally…

but, hey, she *deserved* it for wanting to leave him, that bitch! didn’t she know that it was “only” rape because she wouldn’t do what he wanted? didn’t she know that she MADE him beat her, because she wouldn’t do what he wanted? if she had just kept to her place and done what he told her to, none of it would have happened.
want to buy some land, Wookie?

i REPEAT:
THERE IS NEVER AN “OKAY” OR “FORGIVABLE” REASON FOR DOING SOMETHING LIKE THIS. NEVER an okay or forgivable reason to publish, in ANY form, private pictures.
NEVER.

“In a way, she did exactly that.  When you give me a gift, absent some agreement, it is mine to do with as I please.”

That reasoning only works if you treat my body as an object - like a mixed tape or scarf I made.  But when we are talking about my body - up to and including recordings of me, my voice, my body, etc. (or even my creative ideas - like the pattern I came up for the scarf, or my own songs) law and commen decency say it’s a different type of thing altogether.  The only way to sucessfully argue otherwise is to make use of the cultural assumption that women don’t their own bodies.

Yes, there are different protocols for public figures.  For example, I don’t need a photo release form to use photos I’ve taken of stars the way that I would need for photos I’ve taken of patrons at my library.  But clearly those protocols don’t (or, at least, shouldn’t) include images that were made privately by people that are not me and clearly meant for only private consumption.

And considering that nudity and sexual acts are considered private acts (to the point that public nudity and sexual acts are often illegal), I don’t really think it’s too much to expect that “clearly meant for private consumption” includes gifts depicting nudity and sexual acts, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

(And really, why the fuck is this so confusing for people?)

Wookie, Denelian has already very eloquently replied to you regarding my supposed “absence of logic”, but in case you haven’t realized it, you ARE actually condoning releasing sexual pictures of someone as a form of retaliation (and hiding behind the fact that YOU personally wouldn’t do that doesn’t change anything). And whether you like it or not, it is a form of abuse because it’s not just about publically humiliating someone over a private matter (which is already deeply fucked-up), it’s also about wrecking someone’s life (because that’s the intent behind it, isn’t it?).
So if you think it’s ok to violate someone’s privacy and publically degrade them, people might legitimately wonder if you think it’s also “understandable” to beat up your girlfriend because she cheated on you (or did anything wrong in your view). Lots of people here agree that releasing nude/sexual pictures of someone without their consent is on the sexual assault continuum. At the very least, I think even the most obtuse can agree that it is a severe violation of privacy.
And yes, it disproportionately affects women because, as others have already argued upthread, it is more damaging for a woman to be exposed in a sexual setting than for a man (a man would generally appear as a stud, unless he was pictured with another man or something like that). Besides, how many sex tape cases have you heard of where the victim was a man?

Also, in the age of the Internet, you can never truly erase all traces of pictures that have been posted online at least once. You know they can come back and bite you anytime.
It’s actually a life sentence.